West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service are one of a dozen or so Fire and Rescue Services within the UK to employ the services of their own fire investigation dog team.

The dogs are used as a tool to search post-fire scenes for the presence of flammable and ignitable liquids that could have been used to start or promote fires deliberately.

Hattie is a Yellow Labrador who was trained by Dave Peplow at S C S International and was acquired by West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service in April 2004. Following a Three-week training course at S C S and more on the job training Hattie and Bas passed certification at the Fire Service College in June 2004. During her first year she has attended, along with her handler, Bas Wood, well over 40 incidents where the presence of flammable or ignitable liquids has been suspected working in London, Kent, Hampshire, Surrey and East Sussex.

Hattie is part of the Full Time Fire Investigation Team in West Sussex Fire and Rescue Service, one of three in the UK. A dog's sense of smell is many times more sensitive than a human beings, in fact recent research suggests that Hattie is able to find her target substance down to a level as low as ten to the minus eighteen, that’s very very small.

Dogs were first used in the United States of America when they were the first to be able to condition them to detect accelerants at fire scenes, so successful were they, that now, these dogs are used in many countries in the world.

When Hattie is initially deployed she searches the given area at random until she picks up airborne scent particles of accelerant. She will then work along the scent path until she detects the area of greatest concentration, then alert.

Hattie's alert is what is termed ‘passive’, this means that when a source is located she will point with her nose close to the spot at the exact position and freeze there until rewarded by Bas. This is the location where a Scenes of Crime Officer should take a sample for analysis.

Hattie’s reward on a job is praise only but when training the MAGIC (tennis) ball is used so as to enhance her sense of fun for doing what she does.

Hattie wears special protective boots, on occasions, to make sure she doesn’t cut or burn her paws when searching.

It is very important that Hattie has a good working relationship with her handler and other members of not only the Fire Service but the Public at large, so when off duty, she lives at home with Bas and his family including his two other dogs Kia (lab) and Jemima (bloodhound).