This weekend, a very special honor was presented to a very special police dog. Connecticut State Police K9 Mattie was honored with the unveiling of a statue made to resemble her.

It all began in 1984 when the results of a study was presented to the American Academy of Forensic Sciences detailing how canines can effectively detect "residual accelerant odors". Two years later, one-year-old K9 Mattie, a Black Labrador Retriever, began her training with the Connecticut Emergency Service Canine Unit as an Accelerant Detection Canine, also known as an "Arson Dog".

K9 Mattie served the state of Connecticut for 6 years with the Connecticut State Police from 1986 to 1992. Since she dipped her blue paws into the program she helped to start, more than twenty K9s have followed her paw prints, not to mention the thousands of fire investigators in the US, Australia, Canada and the Netherlands that have been trained by the Connecticut State Police Accelerant Detection Canine Program.

K9 Mattie passed away in 1994 and she sure leaves quite a legacy behind.

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