Buddy has a nose for his new job at the Wichita Fire Department (VIDEO)

Like many new hires fresh out of school, Buddy’s eager to get to work.

He’s quick to respond when he hears his name, hates sitting still for long and loves to show off what he knows.

But he’s not fond of sharing his bone.

Buddy is the Wichita Fire Department’s newest accelerant detection canine, the latest in a line of dogs trained to detect ignitable liquids at fire scenes.

The first male and first blonde Labrador used by the department, Buddy has been on the job for a little more than two weeks. He replaces Sporty, who retired as an “arson dog” when his handler, Stuart Bevis, was promoted to battalion chief.

“They’re a cute, fuzzy, evidence-location tool,” Bevis said of the accelerant detection dogs.

A dog’s sense of smell is 100,000 times more acute than a human’s, Bevis said. While humans can smell a teaspoon of sugar in a cup of coffee, dogs can detect that same amount of sugar dumped into the equivalent of two Olympic swimming pools.

Wichita’s arson detection dogs are trained initially by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and then continue their training with their handlers. The dogs and their handlers become teams, Bevis said, so when his duties took him out of the investigations, it meant that Sporty, his accelerant detection dog, had to retire.

While every dog is trained to detect the six major families of ignitable liquids, Bevis said, each dog has a unique personality and its own way of alerting the handler that it has found something.

“Buddy, he will literally lick it,” said Capt. Kelly Zane, Buddy’s handler. “He starts salivating.”

Sporty, on the other hand, would stretch both front paws in front of him.

“It’s like, ‘Hey, dummy! It’s here. Feed me,’ ” Bevis said.

The detection dogs are fed after they detect accelerants, so over time they learn to disregard other odors – including liquids that may have similar components.

“They can discriminate,” Bevis said. “They can ignore all the yucky smells in a fire ... what we call ‘distractors.’ ”

The dogs can do in 30 minutes what it would take human investigators days to complete – check a fire scene to determine whether accelerants like gasoline or lighter fluid were used. The dogs are trained not just to detect the presence of flammable liquids but to go within a few inches of the source, Zane said.

Like their predecessors, Sporty and Buddy have a change in behavior when they reach a room with an accelerant in it.

“They get antsy,” Zane said.

They may lift their noses in the air or start drooling. No matter which dog is on the scene, they’re taught to sit down at the location of the source – or “park it,” as Zane and Bevis put it.

As part of the deal in which the ATF provides the initial training, the detection dogs used by the Wichita Fire Department can be deployed to fire scenes being investigated by the ATF. Sporty led investigators to key evidence that helped convict Brett Seacat of homicide in the death of his wife, Vashti, in Kingman in 2011, Bevis said.

“To investigators, it was very clear that an ignitable liquid was utilized,” he said.

But Sporty showed them the trail that was poured and where the evidence was located.

The fire department’s six accelerant detection dogs have had instrumental roles in about 130 felony arrests since they first began being used in 1994, fire Chief Ron Blackwell said. The dogs have been used successfully at more than 700 fire scenes.

Zane said he became a firm believer in the value of arson detection dogs when he was investigating a mobile home fire several years ago.

“We were scratching our heads,” Zane said.

He called Brad Crisp, then in charge of investigations, and asked whether he could come out and lend a hand. Crisp came with Jodie, his detection dog, and she alerted investigators to an accelerant under the debris at the burned-out end of the mobile home. The fire turned out to be part of a domestic violence dispute.

“I went ‘holy cow,’ ” Zane said. “I would have never, ever got that.”

The department uses Labradors because the breed is good with people – especially children. That makes them good ambassadors and memorable parts of many safety presentations.

Years from now, Bevis said, students won’t remember the names of the firefighters who put on a fire safety presentation.

“But,” he said, “they’ll remember Buddy.”

This story was originally published May 10, 2015 at 3:07 PM with the headline "Buddy has a nose for his new job at the Wichita Fire Department (VIDEO)."