Fire K9 passes away suddenly
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Lucille was a black Lab whose initial destiny as a seeing eye dog came to grief in training.
So she was retrained to become an arson detection dog, ending up in 2022 with the Altoona Fire Department and fire inspector Justin Smithmyer.
Lucille's sudden death a few days ago has brought Smithmyer and his family of four to grief.
"It's been rough," Smithmyer said by phone Monday, after the city announced the dog's death. "It's been very rough."
Smithmyer spent all his time at work with Lucille: at the station, where she would greet visitors up in the administrative area, hopping up and down and wagging her tail, making sure those visitors "had the attention they deserved"; and she would go on the road with Smithmyer to investigations and to schools and nonprofits for presentations; and when work was done, she would come home with him to be the pet for him, his wife and their two sons, ages 11 and 7.
"She would pal around with my boys, and they became her boys," Smithmyer said. "She became infatuated with them and would protect them and watch over them."
She went everywhere with the family, including baseball games and on vacations.
They called her Lu Lu, or sometimes just Lu.
Now, the children "are working through" their sadness, Smithmyer said.
As is he.
"She was absolutely the best partner I ever had," he said.
Lucille participated with Smithmyer in almost 100 arson investigations, including several that led to successful prosecutions -- working with Smithmyer not only in the city, but in many regional counties, as she was the only arson dog between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, Smithmyer said.
She worked for agencies at the municipal, county, state and federal levels, including the FBI and the ATF, Smithmyer said.
She could sniff out minute quantities of accelerants buried under multiple feet of debris, helping guide Smithmyer to where key evidence lay, making arson investigations far more efficient and effective than they sometimes were otherwise.
If she alerted at a spot in a burned building, "there was a high likelihood (a sample) would come back positive," Smithmyer said. "She was an amazing asset."
She would have been 7 on Nov. 4.
"Lucille suffered an unexpected medical emergency and passed away during the overnight hours of Aug. 8," stated a city news release.
Smithmyer declined to state the cause of her death.
There has been talk about a possible memorial ceremony, but "nothing is set in stone," Smithmyer said.
If there is one, he's not sure if it would be open or private, he said.
"We'll be discussing that over the next several days," he said.
He expects to go through the grieving process before discussions commence among department and city leaders about replacing her, he said.
"She will be dearly missed," he said.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.