Herfordshire Fire & Rescue Service is one of the few brigades within the UK to employ the services of their own Fire Investigation Dog team and took delivery of it's second Fire Investigation Dog in July 2007. “CC” took over from his retired predecessor “Browza” who was Hertfordshire’s first Fire Investigation Dog from 2001 to 2007. Following an intensive four week course run by Dave Peplow of SCS International in Lancashire, handler Nikki Harvey and Black Labrador "CC" joined Hertfordshire's team of Fire Investigators.

Fire Investigation Dogs were first used in America in 1986 where research and trials into their use proved so successful that many more countries have adopted to use this type of dog when investigating fires of a suspected deliberate nature. Fire Investigation Dogs are utilised in cold, post-fire scenes to search through the debris for any remaining traces of ignitable liquids present that could have been used to start or promote a fire deliberately.

With a dog's superior sense of smell and being many times more sensitive than that of a human’s, “CC” will search a fire scene and pick up on airbourne scent particles of ignitable liquids and work his way along the scent path until he detects the strongest emanating source. He will then relay this to his handler, being termed his indication, and is rewarded with play and his beloved tennis ball.

“CC” wears special protective boots when searching a fire scene to protect his paws from cuts and scratches from the debris he has to work within. Following every operational incident “CC” is given a full health check by his handler to ensure that he has no injuries. He is also cleaned and groomed to ensure that he does not carry any contaminated materials to the next incident which he attends.

“CC”, as was his predessor “Browza”, is sponsored and named by Hatfield based Computacenter and is the only Fire Investigation Dog within the East Anglian region. Therefore, he is on hand to assist Fire Investigators in those areas as well as in Hertfordshire.

It is very important that “CC” has a good relationship with not only his handler, but other dogs too as he lives with the family pet “Barney” who is a yellow Labrador/Nova Scotia Retriever.