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.
