Meet the electronics-sniffing dog who helped bust Jared Fogle

Bear the dog.
(Image credit: YouTube.com/ViFiChaNell)

Bear the black Labrador is one of just five dogs in the United States able to sniff out chemicals from electronic devices, and a prosecutor says he was a "key part of the team" that nabbed former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle on child pornography charges.

A 2-year-old rescue, Bear found a thumb drive that had gone undetected by law enforcement inside Fogle's Indiana home in July, NBC News reports. Earlier this month, Fogle agreed to plead guilty to charges that he received child pornography and traveled to New York City to have paid sex with minors. Bear was trained over the course of four months by Todd Jordan, who taught him to smell the components of electronic media. Bear is so skilled he can track down micro-cards the size of a fingernail, and also participated in the investigation of Olympic gymnastic coach Marvin Sharp, who was arrested this week and accused of having sexual contact with a student and possessing child pornography.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.