Testing Options Presented by Clothing

How to handle the clothing sample from Donor 3?

What do we want to test?

• Is there identifiable scent in the clothing?
• We want to compare clothing sample with saliva sample.
• We want to compare clothing sample with sweat sample.
• We want to test the easiest method of using clothing sample - tested dry, stored in a bag indefinitely.
• We want to test dry clothing sample and preserved by freezing.
• We want to compare the two.
• are they equally strong?
• do they age equally?
• We want to compare dry clothing sample with saliva sample and with sweat sample
• Hydration
• We want to test the strength of HC
• Created from water infused with the nightgown itself
• Created from water infused with a square of the nightgown
• We want to preserve (via freezing) water that has been infused w/hydrated clothing for delayed hydration of HC.  Is frozen infused water valuable/usable?
• We want to test HC created and frozen the same way we hydrate and preserve saliva HC.

Additional information that we can obtain through testing?

Hydration Challenges

Because we have such limited saliva and sweat sample from Donor 3, we are going to have to hydrate one half of the original before any testing begins.  This means that each single saliva gauze and sweat gauze will need to be cut in half (diagonally) prior to hydration.  One half of each will be reserved for non-hydrated testing.

We will follow the Scott Smith protocol for hydration:

1.  The scent sample is placed in 3 oz of distilled water, shaken and left for 15 min.

2.  The distilled water is then sprayed onto  new gauze (or cotton) pads which will be double bagged and frozen.

3.  The original sample may then be removed from the distilled water and used for training.

 Hydrate as many HC as the water permits.

Then the HP will be used for testing.

Refer to Dog 2 Testing: Days 4 - 6.  She was testing the HP.  What can we learn from that testing?  The sample is described as "soaked".  That was the residual distilled water remaining from the hydrating process.  How can we improve upon our procedure?

• no odor detected from frozen sample
• the sample became effective at room temp
• HC made from this HP were effective, as was the HP

The main question here:  How can we best utilize the "extra" water remaining in the HP and, in the process, minimize the amount of water remaining in the HP?

Another HP possibility:  What if we do NOT freeze the HP, but merely refrigerate it for storage and use it at room temperature for testing?

How can we extract the extra water from the HP without contaminating it?