When testifying in a court of law, I like to paint a simple picture for the jury that they can relate to. The probability is that your jury members grew up with Lassie and Rin Tin Tin and most juries want to believe dog evidence. Understanding this, if we give them a mental picture that they can understand and remember during the deliberation process, then your dog evidence will have weight.

“What is it that the dog is smelling when he is trailing?”

Just as those jurors grew up with canine heroes, they also read Peanuts Comic Strip every Sunday. Not only did they laugh at the exploits of Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy. They remember that dusty little kid called Pig Pen.

“Humans shed over 50 million skin cells a day. These cells are called skin rafts and they create a scent tunnel for the dog to locate and follow. Remember the character Pig Pen from the Peanuts Comic Strip? That’s what we are to a dog. We are a walking pig pen; shedding 50 million skin rafts a day.

An attorney might ask for an explanation of the difference in a trailing dog and a footstep tracking dog. In explaining the tracker, we can offer the following visual description.

“As a foot lands on grass or dirt, it creates a disturbance. Individual blades of grass are broken and dirt is overturned. This creates a small scent cloud of ground odor that hovers above each footprint. If you can imagine the smell of fresh cut grass in the summer time, that is what an individual footprint smells like to a dog.”

One of my most favorite visual explanations of the degree of specificity a canine detects when smelling is the “Beef Stew” explanation.

“When a human walks into a house and beef stew is cooking on the stove, we say that the beef stew smells good. We smell the stew. When a dog walks into that same house, he identifies the individual parts of that stew. If a dog could talk, he would say boy those onions, potatoes, carrots, celery, beef and bullion smell good.” The dog identifies parts of the sum. We identify the sum.

Offering a visual description helps a person to understand the theory behind what our dogs are doing. It puts a human touch on an otherwise, semi-scientific description. They remember beef stew, Pig Pen, and freshly cut grass. And that is what we are trying to accomplish.

by Jonni Joyce