Robbinsville – A very special guest visited the Graham County Public Library on Monday, to help educate members of the 4-H Club during their first meeting of the year.
This visitor detects chemicals from two miles away, helps put arsonists in jail and once proved the FBI wrong.
The visitor was an yellow English Labrador retriever named Dante.
Dante – along with his owner and trainer Dean Castaldo – make up the only arson detection team west of Raleigh.
While there are other means of detecting the accelerants used to start fires – such as electronic sniffers – those machines must be calibrated routinely if they are to function properly. Castaldo pointed out that dogs never need calibration and are “99.99 percent always correct.”
“That nose can detect a drop of gas in a football field on a windy day,” Castaldo pointed out.
Dante and Castaldo trained together at the Maine State Police Justice Academy for five weeks, working 12-15 hours every day before passing a three-day certification.
“The course is very, very strict in the requirements,” said Castaldo.
The training was sponsored by State Farm at the cost of $25,000 per team.
“State Farm invests a lot of money in the arson program, but we’ll go investigate anything that’s out there, not just State Farm claims,” Castaldo said.
According to State Farm, “Each year billions of dollars in property and hundreds of lives are lost as a result of intentionally set fires,” so training arson-detection teams is crucial. All teams must be re-certified on a yearly basis.
State Farm buys dogs from two places: seizure-dog training and seeing-eye-dog training. This means that Dante failed out of one of those training programs, before finding his true calling: working fires.
The team can be called out to fire scenes any time of the day or night, so Dante has to always be ready to work. At the scene, the trainer first determines if the area is safe enough for Dante.
“No matter what, I have to look after this $25,000 dog,” said Castaldo.
If the scene is safe enough to work, the team then does a “loose walk-through,” followed by a “directional sniff,” which includes the trainer pointing out specific areas for the dog to focus on.
“Kitchens are hard,” said Castaldo. “I’m constantly sticking my hand down his throat and pulling out fire debris at a scene.”
There is a reason for Dante’s ravenous appetite.
“We train every single day and if he doesn’t work, he doesn’t eat,” said Castaldo. “The training never ends. He only eats from my hand, so he has to earn it. It has to be a part of training. He never eats from a bowl like a normal dog.”
Castaldo and Dante have worked at least 100 cases so far, and the six-year-old lab likely has years of service ahead of him.
“Some dogs have worked 12 years,” said Castaldo, “which means they were still working at 14 or 15 years old.”
Arson dogs retire when their trainers retire, and at that point, the dogs continue to live with their trainers and can finally eat out of a bowl like any normal pet.
“I originally thought I wanted a black lab instead of a yellow one, but I wouldn’t trade Dante for the world,” Castaldo declared.