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.

Bear will soon start working with the Seattle Police Department, and Jordan said he plans to train more dogs. Steven DeBrota, a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Indianapolis office, told NBC News that at first he thought he was "being punked," but now sees that Bear's training worked. "I became a believer," he said. "I think it's going to become a regular law enforcement technique."

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Catherine Garcia

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.