Cheeto the dog will help investigate Maine fires
The Maine fire marshal’s office introduced its new arson team, investigator Andrew Whitney and Cheeto the dog, on Tuesday.
The team recently graduated from a four-week long arson dog training.
With the help of Cheeto and two other dogs, the Maine fire marshal’s office will be able to have a dog at any fire scene where they are needed.
This gives investigators another way to track down the source of suspicious fires.
“They can smell a lot that we can’t smell,” Whitney said. “And they can take that big fire scene and they can help us narrow down where we’re going to take a sample. So rather than taking 10 blind samples, we can take two or three really good samples that have a high probability of coming back positive.”
Cheeto was originally raised to be a service dog, but had too strong of a nose and work drive for that role.