Profession Inspired Dog Names

Judge, a Labrador Retriever in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and one of only three arson dogs in Pennsylvania at the time, was the recipient of the American Humane Society Hero Dog Award in the Law Enforcement / Arson category for 2016 and has been an active accelerant detection dog with the Allentown Fire Department since 2011. He has helped to find evidence leading to several arson arrests and in the years between 2011 and 2016 arson fires in Allentown were reduced by nearly fifty percent. Accelerant detection dogs such as Judge go through a great deal of intense training to learn how to do their jobs. They are typically fed by hand and only when they are exposed to an ignitable liquid as their training may be compromised if they are offered a regular bowl of kibble. 

To receive certification as an official arson detection dog, the canine must learn both to detect accelerants and to ignore the other pungent smells that are found in burnt houses and structures and during testing to earn their certification as an arson dog they may be required to participate in over a hundred trials per day. Once they have received their initial certification, most arson dogs continue to train, often six or seven times per day, and they must be recertified each year. Judge himself is familiar with the scent of sixty-one different types of accelerant and can consistently detect even faint scents, needing less than a drop of gasoline to identify it as an accelerant. He has assisted in nearly four hundred fire investigations but still benefits from refresher training programs like the annual arson dog training program put on by State Farm Insurance. Along with the actual job of locating accelerants in burned down houses and buildings, Judge also does his part to help prevent them from happening in the first place. 

Since he started in 2011, Judge has attended hundreds of community public education demonstrations in many different venues, including dog shows, crime watch groups, and public schools, teaching people about what an accelerant detection dog does exactly as well as teaching the observers basic information about fire safety. In at least one situation, the mere mention of Judge’s involvement in an arson case prompted juvenile offenders to turn themselves in, stating to detectives that, with Judge on the case, they knew it was only a matter of time before they would be caught.