Press Association
A Portuguese police video showing British sniffer dogs reacting to Leicestershire couple Kate and Gerry McCann's hire car and their holiday apartment has been made public.
The two specialist animals - one capable of detecting corpses and the other trained to find human blood - carried out searches in the Algarve in early August last year after the McCanns' daughter Madeleine vanished.
Footage posted on The Sun newspaper's website shows the cadaver dog, named Eddie, barking loudly next to the driver's door of the McCanns' Renault Scenic rental car.
It also shows the blood sniffer dog, called Keela, giving a "passive indication" behind the sofa in the apartment where Madeleine disappeared.
Handler Martin Grime says on the video: "She will find blood that's historically very old, and she will find anybody's blood - any human blood, which is important to make sure that everybody knows ...But she is very, very good and when she indicates there is always blood there."
As a result of the dogs' findings, samples were taken from the apartment and car and sent to the Birmingham-based Forensic Science Service (FSS) for analysis.
The sniffer dog and DNA evidence were key in the Portuguese police's decision to name Mr and Mrs McCann as suspects on September 7.
Official police files released last month showed that Mr Grime, a forensic canine expert, expressed caution about the dogs' findings.
In a report sent to Portuguese detectives in August last year, he noted that the animals only "alerted" to items associated with the McCanns, suggesting they had been contaminated with "cadaver scent".
But Mr Grime went on to warn: "This does not, however, suggest the motive or suspect as cross-contamination could be as a result of a number of given scenarios and, in any event, no evidential or intelligence reliability can be made from these alerts unless they can be confirmed with corroborating evidence."
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