The Maine Department of Public Safety is mourning the loss of Baxter, a three-year-old chocolate lab who worked in the Bureau of Emergency Communications as the state’s first comfort dog.
The department of public safety is reviewing the cause of death, according to spokesperson Shannon Moss. Baxter was found dead at about 2 p.m. Wednesday inside a state vehicle at the Bangor Regional Communications Center.
The vehicle may have malfunctioned causing the air conditioning to stop running, Moss stated.
Baxter came to Maine in 2022 as a 5-month-old puppy after the bureau partnered with Hero Pups, a New Hampshire-based organization that trains and pairs dogs with veterans and first responders.
A rescue dog, Baxter was brought on to support those working in Maine’s Department of Public Safety’s Emergency Communication Centers in Augusta, Bangor and Houlton.
“(H)is calming and cheerful presence will be deeply missed by all those who interacted with him,” Moss said in a statement Thursday evening. “The Department extends its deepest condolences to Baxter’s handler and his family, as well as the entire emergency telecommunication team. We have no further information available at this time.”
This is not the first such incident to have occurred. In Arnold, Missouri, a police dog named Vader died from heat exhaustion while left in a cruiser. The handler had left Vader with the air conditioning running, police said. When the handler returned to the vehicle, the air conditioning malfunctioned and the heat alarm system did not activate.
