Maine Pets

By NOEL K. GALLAGHER, Portland Press Herald Staff Writer April 7, 2008

Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

State Fire Marshal investigator Rick Shepard leads arson dog Midnight into a training facility at the Hollis Fire Department last week. Midnight is one of the more than 200 graduates of a dog-training program run by retired Maine State Police Trooper Paul Gallagher.

Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Midnight points her nose at a drop of alcohol solution that she sniffed out at the Hollis training facility. She has worked cases in southern Maine for the past 12 years.

Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Handler Rick Shepard waits for Midnight to find the alcohol he planted on the couch. Shepard says arson dogs can search a large two-story building in 15 minutes, where it would take humans hours to cover the same area.

HOLLIS -- "Seek! Seek!," Rick Shepard urges Midnight, his K-9 partner. "Show me where!"

In a fire-scorched training building, Midnight suddenly stops and sits next to a charred sofa, pointing her nose at the armrest, then looking up at Shepard. Pause. Point. Look.

"She'll keep doing that until she's fed," says Shepard, who quickly gives the 12-year-old black Labrador retriever some food and a few vigorous pats. "Good girl! Seek! Seek!"

Within minutes, Midnight correctly alerts at a cinder block and a snowbank where Shepard, a senior investigator with the state Fire Marshal's Office, has left trace amounts of an accelerant.

Midnight, one of two arson dogs in Maine, is a graduate of the unique dog-training program run by retired Maine State Police Trooper Paul Gallagher for State Farm Insurance. The company underwrites the cost of the $23,000 training program and places the dogs with departments where there have been at least 50 suspicious fires in a year. Established in 1993, the program has placed more than 200 accelerant dogs nationwide.

About 10 Labradors a year are trained by Gallagher, who gets them from pounds and Seeing Eye dog programs. One recent graduate was a Katrina rescue dog.

The dogs train in Alfred for several months, then undergo a five-week course with their new handlers and are recertified annually. About one in 30 will fail the initial training, and one team a year will likely fail recertification, Gallagher said.

Using an arson dog results in faster investigations, more accurate collection of evidence and better lab results, Shepard said. Before using arson dogs, fire investigators relied on their own senses to find evidence of arson. But humans smell in parts per thousand, while Labs smell at parts per quintillion.

"It's been a lot of help," Shep-ard said. "We'd be down on our hands and knees trying to sniff everything ourselves. The dogs can do it much faster and much more accurately than us."

A dog can search a large two-story building in about 15 minutes, he said.

"We'd be in there for hours, and then we still wouldn't find it," Gallagher said.

Lab results have improved, too. Before, investigators would send in 20 samples and have only five come back positive. With dogs, investigators send in four or five samples and generally they all come back positive.

"That's the savings right there," Shepard said, since lab work costs up to $250 per sample.

While drug-sniffing dogs and police K-9 dogs have been a fixture for decades, the accelerant dog-training programs first emerged in the late 1980s. Gallagher heard about a program in Connecticut -- one of the first -- and got involved, making Maine one of the first states to use dogs at fires.

The state Fire Marshal's Office investigates an average of 500 fires a year, with about 40 determined to be arson.

As the state's arson dog in southern Maine for the last dozen years, Midnight has had her share of high-profile cases. In February, she worked the triple homicide and fire in Old Orchard Beach, sniffing the house, several cars and clothing samples, Shepard said.

Years ago, she was at a Portland apartment building fire in which several people died, and as she wound through the crowd she unexpectedly "indicated" on a man. The police pulled him aside, and he confessed on the spot to setting the fire, Gallagher said.

Another dog Gallagher trained was involved in one of the worst arson-murder cases in Portland. In 1992, an arson dog detected accelerants on Virgil Smith, who was sentenced to 58 years in prison for setting a Munjoy Hill fire that killed a baby and three adults, including a man who handed his family to a rescuer on a ladder before falling three stories to his death.

"He was in custody before the fire was even put out," Galla-gher said. Police, who suspected Smith, had the dog check him out at the scene.

For all their serious work, Gallagher makes a point of training the dogs in a way that retains their basic Lab personalities. They live and sleep in his house during training, and they run and play together when they're not working.

"We make it fun. They wag, they bark, they carry on," he said. "We let them be a dog."

Shepard said the bond between dog and handler, together 24/7, is very deep.

"It's really gratifying to work with her," Shepard said. In turn, Midnight responds to him with full-body shimmies and desperate tail wags as she leaps and races around the parking lot and snowbanks at the training facility. Midnight's energy belies the gray on her muzzle and chest.

When Midnight retires in September, she'll continue to live with Shepard, who will be paired with a new dog.

Gallagher and Shepard agreed that they expect business to pick up.

"Whenever the economy gets worse, we get very busy," Gallagher said, referring to insurance scams. "And you can't just snap your fingers and get one of these dogs."

Staff Writer Noel K. Gallagher can be contacted at 282-8226 or at:

ngallagher@pressherald.com