TRIBUTES have been paid to a well loved four-legged firefighter who has died.

Saxon the Labrador spent more than 10 years as a fire dog with Hampshire Fire and Rescue service helping put 500 arsonists behind bars.

However, the 11-year-old Labrador retired in March 2015 along with her sister Inca, ten, who both worked with the fire service for a total of 18 years.

Fire investigator and dog handler Graham Howlett, who the dogs lived with. He tweated: “It’s with great sadness today I had to have Saxon, Hampshire FRS first fire investigation dog, put to sleep. RIP buddy, you will be missed.”

“We have done jobs where the evidence they have found has been instrumental in getting a conviction.

“It’s always nice to know that criminals wouldn’t have been brought to justice without our work.”

Damian Watts, fire investigation station manager added: “Combining the skills of experienced fire investigators with those of a highly-trained canine and handler has undoubtedly equipped Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service with a search team that speeds up the process of ignitable liquid detection, providing the much-needed evidence in the war against arson.”

Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service added that Saxon had such a strong sense of smell that if you put a single drop of petrol at one end of a football pitch, then he would be able to immediately smell it from the opposite end.

One of Saxon’s biggest achievements was when she was paired with Inca to investigate an incident in 2010 when petrol had been poured through a letterbox in Gosport before being set alight.

The dog’s sense of smell indicated the presence of an ignitable liquid which led to the successful conviction of David Regan who was found guilty and jailed for threatening to endanger life.

Fire dogs are trained to work out how fires are started by using their advanced sense of smell to hunt for traces of the flammable liquids used to start fires.