Now lets talk about the law. The fact is that tracking evidence has a miserable track record in a number of state courts, (in many cases because of poor police work and false claims). The state of Minnesota does not accept tracking evidence. The sate of Illinois has a case law that holds Bloodhounds as unreliable. Indiana says that evidence is too uncertain, Iowa calls it weak and uncertain, Montana goes further and calls it "incompetent" and Nebraska calls it "unsafe." In the attached document the handler continually refers to concerns about protecting the scent, concerns about contaminating the scent with flares and auto imitations. The problem with this is that any expert knows that we can not mask scent. Once scent is there we are not going to take it away. The wind may blow it away, the sun may burn it up but nothing we do at the scene is going to take it away. We may add additional scents to it but a good dog is going to be able to track through the problems once he has acquired the scent picture. To write these things down only gives defense attorneys ammunition to attack and distort a handler's testimony. The name of the game is to throw doubt upon the jury.

Any law enforcement office should question the claims that are made by bloodhound tracking dogs handlers. Once again we are not saying they can not track, we are saying they cannot be selective about the people they track. If a dog is placed on a track and demonstrates (through training records) that it will stay on that specific track, then dogs are capable of some pretty amazing things. But being able to run line ups and follow cars is crazy.

Tags & Keywords : dogs,tracking