"Reaction" to clothing can be dismissed.
Eddie had an opportunity to alert to anything that might have been within his scent-range during the inspection at the villa.
The only, ostensible, alert at the villa was to the stuffed toy, where Eddie could, apparently, find no trace of a scent all the time he was able to play with the toy, pick it up, toss it in the air and all the rest.
Only after the toy was hidden in a cupboard could Eddie, apparently, detect a "scent".
Whether that was an error of omission (failing to react when he should have) or commission, reacting when he shouldn't have, we can only guess.
And in the gym, clothing Eddie (according to Joao Carlos) might have alerted to or might not was re-tested.
For any dog attending a crime scene to pick stuff up in its mouth is appalling bad practice.
In the meantime, here are the words of the one PJ officer really to understand the dogs, PJ Inspector Dias:
This summarized description raises a question that we would like to see answered: could the dog be 'marking' not the odours emanated from a cadaver, directly or indirectly (by contagious), but from blood in putrefaction'
These dogs are means for obtaining proof but they cannot be used as proof. They must be taken as instruments. Any vestige, even invisible to the eye, recovered with the use of these dogs, has to be subjected to forensic exam on a credited laboratory.
It is the same Martin Grime that, at pages 2271, refers on his report: 'Although it cannot constitute proof admissible to court, it can help on the recovery of intelligence for the investigation of serious crimes'.
In this case the dogs signalled several places. The technicians of the Scientific Police Laboratory recovered those vestiges ' vestiges that that on it's majority were not visible to the eye ' and sent them to the laboratories for the necessary forensic exams, in order to recover and identify the DNA profiles, that might be extracted from them.
From the screening of the videos, referred previously, done when the dogs were working, some doubts arise. We don't want and we can't take the place of the trainer, we only wish to alert, with this paragraph, to some facts, that according to us, need further clarification.
If the dog is trained to react when he detects what he is looking for, why, in most of the cases, we see the dog passing more than once by that place in an uninterested way, until he finally signals the place where he had already passed several times'
On one of the films, it's possible to see that 'Eddie' sniffs Madeleine's cuddle cat, more than once, bites it, throws it into the air and only after the toy is hidden does he 'mark' it (page 2099). Whys didn't he signal it when he sniffs it on the first time'
Apart from all that was said about the dogs, we must also take into attention the results of the forensic analysis that was performed by the experts on the Scientific Police Laboratory on the day immediately after the facts, and already mentioned where no vestige of blood was found.
