Hoa Nguyen

htnguyen@lohud.com

With a holler of "seek" and a thrust of his index finger and arm, John Peters sets in motion a routine he and his Westchester County police K-9 partner have practiced hundreds of times.

Daisy starts by tentatively pawing up an incline, her nose to the ground. Within moments, she lifts her head, makes a sharp turn left and sprints 200 feet before circling back to a small binder clip, by which she sits as she looks up at Peters.

She's expecting to be fed for the less than two minutes it took to find the clip, which has only a drop of gasoline but enough for the black Labrador to sniff out.

"She's imprinted to think that accelerant and food are very similar," Peters, her handler, says. "She knows that by finding accelerant she'll also get fed."

Peters and Daisy are Westchester's K-9 duo specializing in fire investigations. They came together two years ago during an arson detection dog training program in Maine paid for by State Farm insurance. Rockland County's K-9 pair, Sheriff's Detective Doug Lerner and Scooter, went through the same program in 2006. The two teams are among only 13 certified arson detection K-9 teams in New York trained to sniff out chemicals typically used to intentionally start fires.

Unlike other service dogs bred for a task, most arson detection dogs are career changers. That means many were initially trained for another purpose — often as an aide to the disabled — but due to a variety of reasons that made them unsuitable for that work, they were redirected to arson detection. Other candidates are former shelter dogs with the nose and personality for arson detection.

Daisy was trained to be a service dog for a wheelchair user but because she would sometimes become distracted by other pets, she was redirected to the arson dog program. Scooter was displaced by Hurricane Katrina and had three days left at a shelter before she was slated to be euthanized when trainers identified her as a candidate for arson detection.

Both animals were paired with their handlers during the State Farm program, which acquired the animals, paid for the training and then allowed the handlers, who must be certified as fire investigators, to bring home their detection dogs for use in their respective posts. For Peters and Daisy, it was instant chemistry.

"We're compatible beyond belief," says Peters, an 18-year county police veteran who has always loved dogs and wanted to incorporate one into his work. "We're all play until it's time to work and then we're all work."

Yonkers fire and police officials frequently call on Daisy and Peters for help on blazes that cause significant damage and for which investigators cannot immediately identify the cause.

Dogs such as Daisy help investigators determine whether an accelerant is present. A negative finding is as telling as a positive one, says Yonkers Deputy Fire Chief John Flynn.

"That gives us a measure of assurance that something wasn't poured," he says.

In many cases, Daisy does find an accelerant but that doesn't automatically prove someone lit the fire with it. FBI statistics show Yonkers only had 10 confirmed arson fires last year but Flynn says there were many more suspicious fires for which officials cannot definitively pinpoint the cause, so they leave it categorized as undetermined.

Daisy isn't the county's first arson detection dog. Both her predecessors were Czech-born German shepherds who have since died. Canto was owned and handled by Gus Spedaliere of the Greenville Fire Department and Blaze was handled by Eric DiBartolo, a Westchester County fire investigator.

Unlike Daisy, who sits and points her nose at what she has identified as a source of the scent, Canto, who was trained in Atlantic City, New Jersey, would indicate the scent by furiously digging in place.

At the state Office of Fire Prevention and Control, officials recruit arson detection dogs from local shelters and run a training program that incentivizes dogs to smell out accelerants through a game of tug of war rather than food. The methodology is different but the result should be the same, officials say.

"The dogs we chose, we look for a high play drive," says William McGovern, deputy chief of investigations for the division. "The task is in essence just a game for them."

But while arson detection dogs' noses play an important role, the dogs are also public ambassadors — a position Peters embraces, maintaining the Daisy the Arson Detection Dog Facebook page, which has more than 1,000 likes.

Peters, a married father of two children, is unabashedly proud of Daisy online and in person, often singing her praises.

"We're in love, don't you know?" he says.