Work is play for Chip the accelerant-detecting dog

Friday is Take Your Dog to Work Day, and people across the nation will have their canine companions with them on the job.

But when Chip the Brittany spaniel goes to work with Ceres Fire Department Capt. Jeff Santos, it’s not a visit, nor just a relaxing day on a dog bed. He’s there to work.

Thing is, he doesn’t know it’s work.

Santos is an origin and cause investigator assigned to the Stanislaus County Fire Investigations Unit, run by the District Attorney’s Office. And Chip is an accelerant detection K-9, complete with a metal badge on his leather collar.

Every day Santos reports for duty, Chip is at his side. And while every day doesn’t bring an investigation for the dog – he’s been called out about 50 times in his three years of service – it does bring training.

The state requires Santos to train with Chip 16 hours a month. Typically, that means the captain “throws out scents” for the dog three to 10 times a shift.

He has a sealed plastic bag with roughly 10 small blocks of wood that have been burned a bit, and a separate bag with a nearly identical piece. What sets that piece apart is that years ago, it received not even a full drop of weathered gasoline to give it the scent of accelerant.

It also has the letter “P” written on it, for “positive,” so Santos knows Chip has sought out the right piece.

Chip is a sharp dog, but so far as everyone knows, he doesn’t read, so he isn’t cheating.

“I’m part of his pack, I’m his leader. … He wants to work and be with me,” Santos said prior to running Chip through training at Ceres Fire Department Station 3 on Thursday afternoon. “When he works, it’s not work for him. It’s completely playtime. He’s a toy-driven dog, not food-driven, and he only gets to play ball when he works.”

Chip proved his handler right by leaping with excitement when Santos pulled out a toy ball. “Ready to work?”

Santos scattered the wood pieces on the station’s concrete floor, then put the scented piece in the mix while Chip was distracted.

Within just a few seconds of getting the command to find it, Chip had a block between his front paws. Santos picked it up, found the “P” and said, “That’s it!” Chip got his reward of praise and getting to play.

A rare breed

While police K-9s are plentiful, accelerant-detecting dogs are a rarity, Santos said. There are only four to six working at government agencies in California, he said, though there are some others with private handlers who hire out their services. “This is not a Ceres Fire Department dog,” Santos makes clear. “He’s all of Stanislaus County’s.” And through resource-sharing agreements, Chip and Santos also work in San Joaquin and Merced counties.

“We don’t need a dog to do this – many places don’t have them,” Santos said of investigating fire scenes to determine whether accelerant was used. “But it’s a lot harder to check for ignitable liquids at a scene without one.” He compared it to cutting wood with a hand saw vs. a power saw.

A gas spectrometer senses a certain range of ignitable liquids, but it needs batteries, its sensors can get dirty, it needs calibration, Santos said. Chip can sense a greater range of scents and needs no batteries or calibration. The dog also has been fortunate not to be affected by allergies, as some other scent dogs are.

About the only thing Santos has to watch out for is Chip getting overheated and panting, because when he pants, he’s breathing through his mouth, meaning he’s not smelling. So Chip isn’t allowed to run and play when he’s about to work, and Santos makes sure he’s hydrated and even sprays him with water at hot scenes to keep him cool.

When he took Chip into his home three years ago as his handler, trainers advised Santos he’d have to kennel the dog part of each day to keep his energy level up. But as the captain lived and worked with Chip, he soon realized “his natural hyperness is so high, he doesn’t need to be kenneled.”

Days, at most, from death

Chip was trained at the Southern Star Ranch in Florence, Texas, which produces dogs to sniff out bombs, drugs, cadavers, mites, even peanuts to protect people with allergies.

Southern Star doesn’t breed dogs to be sniffers, Santos said. It’s a big proponent of getting animals out of kill shelters. Chip, for instance, was within 36 to 48 hours of being put down, he said.

Chip was donated to the Ceres Fire Department by Fire Dogs, a charity arm of Ceres-based adjusting firm Concordia Claims Management. Fire Dogs covered the $8,000 to $10,000 it cost to train the dog, flew Santos to Texas for two weeks of training and even is providing him with a lifetime supply of food for Chip.

Speaking of training, the ongoing work Santos does with Chip really is more for him than the dog, he admitted.

“Ninety-nine percent of mistakes made on fire scenes are the handlers’ fault,” Santos said.

Once he and Chip got to know each other and Santos could see the dog’s process, the captain’s job on a scene became that of removing obstacles – closing doors to stop drafts, moving furniture to let Chip get to what he smells.

Behavior that struck Santos as strange in the early days now makes complete sense. “The hardest thing I had to learn was just to let him do his thing.”

This story was originally published June 23, 2016 at 5:19 PM with the headline "Work is play for Chip the accelerant-detecting dog."