Jane and Jack Pearson were camping in May 2010 near Hawthorne, and had taken their own horses and Murphy on the trip.

Despite being contained by a hotwire corral, a band of mustangs came through their camp at night and spirited Murphy away.

Jane Pearson says she went back to the area several times and would see her beloved mule. But each time she got near a large stud would run Murphy further off.

Murphy’s adventure ended last Monday, when the skinny black mule was rounded up during a Bureau of Land Management wild horse gather.

Pearson says the animal is readjusting to domestic life.

His photo is now on the cover of a new book about one of the world’s leading German shepherds: Rin Tin Tin. The new book by Susan Orlean is “Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend.”

In this book cover image released by Simon and Schuster, "Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend," by Susan Orlean, is shown. Bones, the German shepherd from Fairbanks, Alaska, on the cover of the book, was adopted from a shelter six years ago by photographer Carol Falcetta. (AP Photo/Simone and Schuster)

Bones had been neglected and abused before he landed at the animal shelter in late 2005. He was at least 40 pounds underweight.

“The day we met, I was going to the pound to rescue a dog that someone had told me about,” Falcetta said.

That other dog had already been adopted by the time Falcetta visited the shelter, but she walked among the animals and encountered a thin, dirty and scared shepherd whose eyes were empty and whose motions were listless. Falcetta said she knew right away that she wanted to adopt him.

“As it turned out, Bones was not only starved but his medical needs were enormous,” she said. He had dysplasia in both hips and required surgery on both at the same time. Dr. Val Stuve performed the operation and soon it was all Falcetta could do to keep up with him.

In the summer of 2006, about two months after his operation, Bones went out with Falcetta to a spot off the Steese Highway where they watched someone panning gold, against a backdrop of hills and sky.

Falcetta took several photos of her dog along the Steese, “never thinking that one day a photo from that very special time would be on the cover of a book.”

And not just any book, but a story about a German shepherd known the world over.

Getty Images, a photo agency, put out the word a few years ago to encourage photographers to submit their works.  They were interested in Falcetta’s work and she submitted the photo of Bones, who was staring off into the distance, looking away from the camera.

On June 7 this year, the photographer noticed that a publisher had purchased the photo and she did some research to find out how it would be used. The image was modified somewhat by the artist for Simon & Schuster, but the essence of the Fairbanks dog is still there for all to see.

Falcetta said there are no words to describe how she felt when she learned the photo would be on the book cover, with Bones standing in for all dogs who share a little bit of the spirit of Rin Tin Tin.

Three days later, on June 10, Falcetta was holding Bones in her kitchen when he died of cancer. She said he “let me see firsthand the power of forgiveness and the ability to press through and press on even in the worst of times.”

Orlean, an award-winning author and writer for The New Yorker magazine, worked on this book for 10 years and creates an image of Rin Tin Tin that will be appreciated by the woman who cared for Bones.

“He was an idea and an ideal,” Orlean says of Rin Tin Tin. “A hero who was also a friend, a fighter who was also a caretaker, a mute genius, a companionable loner. He was one dog and many dogs, a real animal and an invented character, a pet as well as an international celebrity. He was born in 1918 and he never died.”

Her goal was to make sure standard-hearing children understand their deaf classmates are no different. She’ll jump through hoops to make sure she gets her point across.

Recently at Chappelow K-8 Magnet School, she succeeded, exciting about 600 kids with her amazing ability to take food out of other peoples’ mouths, jumping through hula hoops, flying through the air to catch tennis balls in her mouth and finding food under cups on the floor — all with a simple hand signal from her best friend.

Angelyne the Amazing Deaf Cattle Dog performs with her owner Eric Melvin at Chapelow Middle School in Evans

But Angelyne is no ordinary deaf or hard-of-hearing instructor. She’s a nearly 6-year-old Australian Cattle Dog.

“I called the puppy kindergarten teacher and said two words I will never say again,” said Eric Melvin, Angelyne The Amazing Deaf Cattle Dog’s owner, about the day he learned Angelyne was deaf. “I quit.”

Melvin, however, decided Angelyne was too beautiful and too important to give up on. He couldn’t walk away after taking her to a veterinarian who specialized in special needs animals.

In one year, Melvin taught Angelyne 11 hand signs for simple commands such as sit, lie down and come.

“She has taught me that we are all people first,” Melvin said. “We all have something special we can contribute.”

Chappelow brought Melvin and Angelyne to the school during national Deaf Education Week. Chappelow houses 21 sign-dependent hearing-impaired students for Greeley-Evans School District 6 in grades pre-kindergarten through eighth.

Since 2007, Melvin and Angelyne have been traveling the state teaching others about what a little bit of compassion and a lot of hard work and persistence can do. Melvin started out the first year with 12 presentations. He is on track to perform at 60 schools this year.

“Even if you have a disability, you can still learn and become something great,” said Rebecca Gerwig, 14, about what she learned from the presentation. “How she focused without even hearing him was awesome.”

Melvin has trained the Australian cattle dog to recognize hand signals instead of voice commands.

Angelyne now knows 22 different hand signals and non-verbal commands, including many tricks that include jumping though successive hula hoops and balancing a treat or a flashlight on her nose, then tossing it into the air and catching it.

“It was pretty cool,” said Nikole Wertz, 13. “It showed the deaf kids you can do more and prove people wrong that you cannot do things just because you’re deaf.”

Melvin said it was the best decision he ever made, and his life is much more satisfying because of it.

“Once I focused on the things she could do instead of the things she couldn’t, everything got very easy,” he said. “I forgot that she couldn’t hear at all.”

“I think it was God’s plan to put those two things together,” Warren said recently at Presbyterian Manor, 4712 S.W.6th. “It’s a little bit of effort, but it’s worth it.”

Warren, of Ottawa, said she doesn’t charge a fee for taking the 4-year-old Cindy to assisted living and nursing homes as a therapy animal. She said seeing the residents’ faces light up is all the pay she needs.

“I like to brighten their day,” Warren said. “Just seeing them smile. I just think we need to give them more attention.”

Rae Warren, left, of Ottawa, answers questions from Vicki Williams, right, and Muriel Armstrong, about Cindy, a miniature therapy horse.

Amber Lopez, Presbyterian Manor’s activity director, said she wanted to give her residents a different kind of therapy experience when she contacted Warren about bringing Cindy to the assisted living facility.

She said several different types of dogs visit the facility but thought having a miniature horse would really be a treat.

“I wanted to jump on the opportunity,” Lopez said. “I think a new experience makes it nice. I think it brings back a lot of memories. A lot of them (residents) grew up on farms.”

Several residents said they enjoyed having the 271/2-inch-tall, 182-pound horse visit them.

“I think she’s darling,” Vicki Williams said.

“I think it’s really something,” added Muriel Armstrong.

“I really enjoyed petting that horse,” Dorothy Bomar said. “I wish I was younger and had one.”

Warren, a full-time U.S. Postal employee, said she does her best to take Cindy to as many assisted living facilities as her schedule allows.

She said she got Cindy from Salina, Texas, and that miniature horses originated in the U.K. and were used in American coal mines as late as the 1950s.

Warren said Cindy has a calm and even temperament, making her ideal to have around elderly people.

“I wanted to do something different,” she said. “I looked on the Internet for a suitable pony. We’ve just fallen in love with each other.”

The nonprofit public aquarium was about ready to go belly-up at the end of 2005 when the baby bottlenose dolphin was brought there after getting her tail tightly entangled in a crab-trap line. She lived, but her tail fluke withered away, forcing the young animal to learn how to swim with just a stump and then adapt to a revolutionary prosthetic. Winter’s inspirational story of perseverance made her a global media star, quadrupled attendance at the aquarium and spawned a lucrative line of toys, books and other merchandise.

Now Winter is a movie star.

In this Aug 31 photo, Winter the dolphin swims in a tank in Clearwater, Fla. .(AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

The charismatic animal plays herself in “Dolphin Tale,” a family-friendly 3-D movie starring Harry Connick Jr., Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd and Kris Kristofferson, opening Sept. 23. The production is based on Winter’s unlikely story of surviving the loss of her tail, then thriving and inspiring human visitors — including war veterans — who have lost limbs and are adapting to their own prosthetics.

The story got some fictional tweaks — a troubled boy (Nathan Gamble) who bonds with Winter was created as a central character who finds the gravely injured animal — but the movie sticks close to the real events surrounding the loss of Winter’s tail and her recovery at the aquarium. And in another twist on art imitating life, in the movie Winter’s presence helps save the modest marine rescue center from financial ruin. A big chunk of the film was shot at the facility last fall.

“Largely what you see with her rescue, her rehabilitation, the (prosthetic) tail being made, the fact it was filmed here and Winter stars as herself, it’s pretty much real life,” aquarium CEO David Yates says.

Connick, who plays a veterinarian and director of the marine rescue hospital, says he didn’t find out the script was based on a true story until after he had read it.

“I thought it was somebody’s creative imagination at work,” he says. “I was just blown away. I couldn’t get over it, really, not only because of her survival and consequently thriving, but the advancements they made in human prosthetics because of it. I was just blown away that the whole thing was true.”

Winter wasn’t expected to survive when brought to the aquarium in December 2005 and was left with a rounded stump after losing her tail. A team of more than 150 volunteers and veterinarians spent more than four months nursing her back to health around the clock.

“When she arrived here we didn’t think she would make it through the night,” says trainer Abby Stone. “She was stressed, she was not physically doing well, she had been through a major ordeal. Most animals in that situation would not have made it.”

In this Aug 31 photo, Clearwater Marine Aquarium trainer Cindy Farber works with dolphins Winter, right, and Panama in Clearwater, Fla. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

Winter learned how to swim without her tail — amazing her handlers with a unique combination of moves that resemble an alligator’s undulating swimming style and a shark’s side-to-side tail swipes. She uses her flippers, normally employed for steering and braking, to get moving.

The prosthetic tail — made of rubberized plastic and carbon fiber — is a wonder of modern science, with the developers, Hanger Orthopedic Group’s Dan Strzempka and Kevin Carroll, having to design the intricate tail fluke as well as figure out a way to keep the whole thing on her body. The solution was a sleeve created from a sticky gel composite that slips down onto her stump and creates suction when the prosthetic appendage is applied.

Since Hanger got involved, Strzempka has taken new amputees to see Winter at the aquarium. Interaction with her has been especially effective in coaxing children to wear their new prosthetics, which can feel strange and uncomfortable at first.

“It’s amazing to see the impact she has on people,” Strzempka said. “When we first got into this, we thought we could help this dolphin. She’s helped us 20 times more than we could ever help her.”

Winter wears the new tail only a half hour at a time, three or four times during the day, as her handlers continue to get her used to it and give her spine a break from the strain of the side-to-side swimming. She is trained to follow commands and patiently allows the prosthetic to be put on and taken off in front of adoring crowds.

Director Charles Martin Smith says Winter was so social and animated that capturing her engaging behaviors on film was relatively easy. She enjoys human contact, which he says opened up a lot of possibilities for filming people in the water with her.

In this Aug. 31, photo, Clearwater Marine Aquarium senior marine mammal trainer Abby Stone kisses Winter the dolphin during a show (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)

“I spent those first three days just walking around and learning about her,” Smith says. “She likes to carry toys around on her (nose), so I wrote that into the movie. She has a blue mattress that she likes to jump up on and float around on like a little kid, so I put that in the movie. She has this signature sound that she makes that they call a ‘tweety bird’ — like a little high-pitched bird trill — so I wrote that into the movie.”

Winter captivated everyone, including Freeman. The veteran actor plays the specialist who takes on the challenge of designing the new appendage for the tailless animal. Freeman had never even been near a dolphin before.

“Playing the doctor who was going to create the prosthesis for her, I had a lot of hands-on time with her,” Freeman said. “I remember one day early on when I felt we needed to get to know each other a little bit, so I coaxed her up to get some fish and keep her nearby where I could pet her and talk to her a little bit.”

The aquarium got a significant expansion thanks to the movie, after Smith decided he needed a nicer pool to film some of the water scenes. The other concrete tanks were left over from the aquarium’s previous life treating the city’s sewage. Yates says a second aquarium building is opening in downtown Clearwater that will display the movie props.

“It was like a dream come true getting her story out there, because she has such an amazing story,” says Stone, the trainer. “It was like the best thing that could ever happen to this facility.”

Dolphin Tale arrives in local theaters September 23.

How she got to New York, more than 1,600 miles away, and the kind of life she lived in the city are mysteries.

But thanks to a microchip implanted when she was a kitten, Willow will be reunited in Colorado with her owners, who had long ago given up hope.

Willow, a 6-year calico cat that went missing from her Colorado home during a renovation 5 years ago, sits in a cage at her temporary home on Sunday, Oct. 3, 2010, in New York's Animal Care and Control (ACC) facility. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

“To be honest, there are tons of coyotes around here, and owls,” said Jamie Squires, of Boulder. “She was just a little thing, five and a half pounds. We put out the ‘Lost Cat’ posters and the Craigslist thing, but we actually thought she’d been eaten by coyotes.”

Squires and her husband, Chris, were “shocked and astounded” when they got a call Wednesday from Animal Care & Control, which runs New York City’s animal rescue and shelter system.

Willow had been found on East 20th Street by a man who took her to a shelter.

“My husband said, ‘Don’t say anything to the kids yet. We have to make sure,’” Squires said. “But then we saw the picture, and it was Willow. It’s been so long.”

ACC Executive Director Julie Bank said a scanner found the microchip that led to the Squires family.

“All our pets are microchipped,” Squires said. “If I could microchip my kids, I would.”

The children are 17, 10 and 3 years old, so the older two remember Willow, Squires said. As for the 3-year-old, “She saw the photo and said, ‘She’s a pretty cat.’”

The Squireses also have a yellow Labrador named Roscoe, who knew Willow, and an English mastiff named Zoe.

“We had another dog back then, too, and I remember that Willow would lie with them as they all waited to be fed,” Squires said. “She thought she was a dog.”

Squires said Willow escaped in late 2006 or early 2007 when contractors left a door open during a home renovation.

Since then, the family had moved about 10 miles from Broomfield to Boulder, but it kept its address current with the microchip company.

Bank recommended that all pet owners use microchips.

She said Willow, who now weighs 7 pounds, is healthy and well-mannered and probably has not spent her life on the mean streets of Manhattan. But there are no clues about her trip east or anything else in the five years she’s been missing.

Squires seemed a bit worried about a possible New York state of mind.

“I don’t know what kind of life she’s had, so I don’t know what her personality will be like,” she said. When Willow disappeared, she said, “She was a really cool cat, really sweet.”

The ACC and the Squireses were trying to arrange for transportation back to Colorado and health certificates and said it might be two weeks before the reunion. Willow may spend some time with a foster family in New York.

“The kids can’t wait to see her,” Squires said. “And we still have her little Christmas stocking.”

Probably not. But on Tuesday, the black-and-tan coonhound from Boulder, Colo., gets the 2012 Guinness World Records title for “longest ears on a living dog.”

In this photo taken Oct. 10,2010 showing Harbor, an 8 year old coonhound from Bolder Co. displays his winning ears after winning a Guinness World Record titlefor 2012 for the Dog With The Longest Ears in Bachelor Gulch, Co. (AP Photo/Ryan Schude/Guinness World Records)

His left ear is 12.25 inches long and his right is 13.5 inches long.

Owner Jennifer Wert says when her 8-year-old was a puppy, he would trip on his ears and roll down stairs.

These days, Wert says people often stop them to ask questions, take photos or tug on his ears.

Tigger, a bloodhound from Illinois who died in 2009, still holds the record for longest ears ever. One was 13.5 inches long, the other 13.75 inches long.

Coonhounds use their ears to help with scent.

___
Online: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com

At 156,000 ($ 205,000) for barely a pound of feathers and lightning-fast fowl, Blue Prince has a one-way ticket to pampered retirement and lifelong breeding in China, which these days has become a predictable destination for topflight birds.

Over the past month, two auctions of Belgian racing pigeons have set one record after another, confirming Belgium as the age-old prime breeding hub of the birds — and China as the new center of global demand.

“They want to have the best pigeons, own the best pigeons, breed with the best pigeons,” said Stefan Roosen after wealthy Chinese buyers helped push the sale of the 218-bird colony of his late father, Pros, to a single-auction world record 1.368 million ($1.8 million) last weekend. In general, the top birds bought in Belgium are not raced in China — it would be too expensive to lose them — but their offspring are.

In European pigeon racing, birds are taken up to 1,000 kilometers (700 miles) from their lofts and released. Races are decided by which bird flies back the fastest.

Associated Press - China's Yi Minna, the chief operating officer at the PiPa pigeon auction house which organized the Roosen sale, watches pigeons Jan. 12 at Pigeon Paradise in Knesselare, Belgium.

The recent record-breaking auctions, with their Belgium-China connection, highlight the sport’s past and its future.

From its humble origins as a working-class pastime across Belgium and Western Europe over the past century, pigeon racing spread across the globe and developed particular cachet in modern-day China, which escaped the brunt of the global financial crisis and is now passionately spending on pigeons.

“Along with the economical growth of China, the Chinese market, there is a lot of interest,” said Yi Minna, the Chief Operating Officer at the PiPa pigeon auction house, which organized the Roosen sale.

Among the new class of wealthy Chinese, many spend their money on fine wines, luxury cars, and “collection of horses, of dogs and pigeons as well,” Yi said.

And with pigeons, Yi said, there is one huge advantage.

“One bottle of wine remains one bottle,” she said. “You have a nice pigeon and it will have more children, grandchildren.”

That is just the kind of breeding at which Belgians have long excelled. Generations of knowledge have taught fanciers how to build the best bloodlines with top racers. In the 1950s, this nation of 10 million had over 250,000 official members in the Royal Pigeon Federation. Just about every family had someone who spent weekends in blue overalls tending a few dozen pigeons. Sunday races were the highlight for the downtrodden after a week of labor.

Some pigeon breeders made their way up and developed coops to match their soaring careers — like Pros Roosen, who proved as competitive in real estate as he was in pigeon racing.

“There were clever and smart guys that were looking at it with different eyes and were trying to get better pigeons,” said his son Stefan. “They were combining the best bloodlines with one another to get even better and stronger racers. … That is why the Belgian pigeons over the years became the best in the world.”

That paid off handsomely for the Roosen family, when five birds fetched 60,000 ($79,000) or more each in the auction, a bittersweet legacy for the fancier who died last August.

“It is a great honor for him. The name of Pros Roosen will last a long time now,” said his son standing in the nearly empty loft where once the champions nested.

Even though Stefan feels some nostalgia, pigeon racing was never his sport. So it is when a great tradition is in decline.

From a quarter million pigeon fanciers half a century ago, there are 30,000 left in Belgium. “And they have an average age of about 70, so the decline will continue,” said Pierre De Rijst, head of the Belgian Pigeon Federation.

Associated Press - Pigeons fly inside their coop Jan. 12 at Pigeon Paradise in Knesselare, Belgium. Belgian's have long excelled at pigeon breeding kind of breeding and generations of knowledge have taught fanciers how to build the best bloodlines with top racers.

He remembers 1955 when 20 pigeon breeders on his street would spend evenings sitting outside discussing racing strategies.

“Now,” he said wistfully, “there are two left.”

“Tell me, who wants to stay home all summer to tend the birds? Everybody goes on holidays. They have other entertainment.”

So the precious birds fly off to Asia, carrying with them generations of genetic know-how.

But in China, federation membership has boomed over the past 12 to 15, and is now about 300,000. For top pigeons, prices have increases two to threefold in ten years, said Martin Martens, of PiPa.

“Prize money is enormous,” Yi said. “We have a 1 million ($1.31 million) race in Shanghai, with the winner getting about half that,” she said.

And that is reflected in the Belgian auctions.

“These guys, they just don’t stop,” De Rijst sighed. “They say: ’this bird comes with us to China’ and that’s it.”

He joined Palm Beach County sheriff’s jail deputies about two years ago as their first contraband dog, and still is the only dog patrolling the county’s three jails. Another German shepherd, Hawk, was assigned to the jail about 10 years ago, but his job was to prevent escapes, Capt. David Sleeth said.

“Our primary focus (with Faro) is narcotics detection,” he said, “not only for him identify contraband, but to act as a deterrent.”

Faro is part of the jail’s six-member Corrections Emergency Response Team — a sort of a jail SWAT team — that often is called upon to quell the most serious threats behind bars. Faro is trained to sniff out illegal drugs such as cocaine, heroin or marijuana that may be sneaked into the jail.

“He makes our job easier,” said Deputy Roger Kirby, Faro’s handler. “He can smell things that I can’t smell, (but) there are things he can’t find that are serious, like weapons.”

Faro so far has found about 20 cases worth of contraband, Kirby said.

Contraband dogs are used in jails and prisons around the world to find drug contraband. A dog has more than 220 million olfactory receptors in its nose, while humans have 5 million.

In recent years, police dogs have been trained to find a new form of contraband — cell phones. Faro hasn’t been trained for that, since it’s more a problem in prisons than in county jails, Kirby said.

In Broward County, the Sheriff’s Office uses one of its road dogs for random searches but doesn’t station one at the county jail.

Faro started his career on road patrol before reassignment to the jail. He’s excitable and gets into a frenzy when Kirby walks him through the halls. But that energy is good, the deputy said, because finding drugs is a game for this dog with a coat as black as ink.

Faro’s reward for digging up drugs is a game of tug-of-war with Kirby with a hand towel or his favorite ball.

“He’s searching for the (drug) odor, which in his mind is the actual reward — the ball or the towel,” Kirby said. “It’s a game that he and I are playing. He gets the ball, he’s happy, and we’re rewarded by getting the drugsOur only goal is for him to want to search nonstop.”

The searches are random among the 3,000 inmates in Palm Beach County jails.

“People (visiting) and inmates don’t know when the dog is coming around,” Kirby said.

Typically at the main jail, on Gun Club Road west of West Palm Beach, a drug-toting visitor comes, sees Faro, then walks back to the car to get rid of the contraband. If Kirby sees that happen, he takes Faro for a walk around the parking lot to see if the dog’s nose knows.

“We try to have him in high-profile positions,” Sleeth said.

During a recent training search in a two-floor dorm in the jail, Faro followed his command to search, and sniffed his way around the tables and beds.

Faro found synthetic drugs used for training, some hidden in a bed and more stuffed in a sneaker. And he then got his reward, jumping right into his favorite game of a tug-of-war.

Thankfully, this pooch doesn’t make corny puns. She just helps sniff out arsonists.

“Arson dogs are great,” said Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger.

The state’s latest newest-detecting canine is a 1-year-old yellow Labrador retriever named Tana. Tana finished her schooling in September, and her handler is Rose Rozmiarek, chief investigator for the Kansas State Fire Marshal’s Office.

Arson dogs are used to help detect chemical accelerants commonly used in arson fires. Doing so, Praeger said, helps lower insurance premiums and is a deterrent for potential arsonists, which also helps save lives.

In a demonstration on the front lawn of the Statehouse, Tana’s handler Rozmiarek displayed her canine’s prowess at detecting a chemical accelerant in different situations with numerous smells that would be present at a house fire scene.

Rozmiarek trains Tana at all hours because arsonists don’t set blazes according to a 9-to-5 schedule.

“It keeps her on alert,” Rozmiarek said.

She said accelerant-detecting canines are invaluable for two reasons:

— Fire investigators’ on-scene times are greatly reduced because the arson dogs can detect accelerant odor in amounts smaller than parts per million. An arson dog’s keen sense of smell is a large nose above instruments designed to do the same thing.

— The samples taken from a possible arson scene and given to a chemical lab for analysis are more viable because the dogs are so good at locating accelerants. This reduces costs because fewer samples are needed, which also saves time.

These two factors not only help catch and deter arsonists, Praeger said, but they also lower the cost of insurance premiums.

State Farm Insurance underwrites the arson dog program. Each dog is sent to a five-week canine accelerant-detection school and is then certified by a chemist as being able to detect chemical accelerants commonly used in arsons. Tamara O’Connor, a spokeswoman for State Farm Insurance, said the company sponsored two dogs previously in Kansas. Both now are retired.

According to information provided by the fire marshal’s investigation division, more than 3,500 intentionally set structure fires occurred in the state in 2009, which caused more than $36.8 million in property damage. The conviction rate is 21.1 percent in the past three years.

O’Connor said the two retired dogs, based out of Olathe and Wichita, combined worked more than 300 fire scenes that resulted in more than 70 felony arrests across the state.

“We know this program isn’t the complete answer to arson,” O’Conner said. “But we think we are providing one more important tool for the law enforcement community to use.”

Rozmiarek, who has been a member of the fire marshal’s office for more than nine years, said Tana lives with her in Topeka and is a playful young pup. An arson dog’s career usually lasts seven or eight years, she said.

Tana, who is a real police K-9 and full-time member of the office’s investigation division, has jurisdiction throughout the state. She is available to local departments, which will call and request for her services.

“Sometimes people will call us even while they are in the middle of fighting a fire,” Rozmiarek said.