Investigators get help from ATF dog

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Investigators are getting help from a four-legged friends in the aftermath of a downtown fire.

A seven-year-old black lab named Bailey has been working at the destroyed apartment development for the past couple days helping investigators sniff out clues.

Bailey started out his life in public service as a seeing eye dog but needed a career change.

"He flunked out because of his distraction to cats," Fire Marshall Michael Wilson with the Warsaw Fire department said.

Now he spends his days with Wilson helping scour fire scenes like the destroyed the apartment development Cosmopolitan on the Canal.

Bailey is only the ATF certified accelerant detection dog in Indiana. There are 72 in the country.

"Ready to go to work," Wilson asked Bailey. "Now when they find what they are trained to be looking for and sniffing for, their job is to sit. You will usually see a wag of the tail with him."

Wilson squeezed out three drops of ignitable liquid on random items to demonstrate how Bailey sniffs out clues for investators.

Bailey's nose works better than any laboratory equipment and saves investigators a lot of time.

"He will pinpoint within an inch. We then mark that area for the evidence technician to be able to pull his evidence to send off to a criminal laboratory," Wilson said.

Bailey works so hard because he knows dinner is coming.

"With him being on food reward, the only way that the canine eats each week is when he works. He doesn't eat out of a bowl and never has any human food," Wilson said.

Bailey works about 50 to 60 fire scenes a year.

He has combed almost every inch of the destroyed complex but there are still some spots that are too dangerous.