(Photo Courtesy of the Transportation Security Administration)

Noah Haswell, Beaver County Radio News

(Pittsburgh, PA) A dog named Steeler, who is a canine that detects explosives from the Pittsburgh International Airport, has won the 2025 Transportation Security Administration’s Cutest Canine Contest. The public voted Steeler the winner on social media from four finalists from TSA that each represented a different region of the United States of America. There were initially 97 dogs nominated for this contest. Steeler is a two-and-a-half-year-old Laborador retriever who has been detecting explosives for just more than a year and works with his handler, Mark Smith, at the Pittsburgh International Airport as part of the multilayered security approach of the Transportation Security Administration. This announcement came yesterday, August 26th, 2025, which is National Dog Day, which is celebrated each year on the date of August 26th. Steeler, who won the 2025 TSA Cutest Canine Contest by votes totaling just a few hundred, will be on the front cover of the TSA’s 2026 Canine Calendar, which is scheduled to be released in December of 2025. Steeler enjoys eating jumbo hot dogs, fetching balls and playing with a tug rope. February 12th, 2023 was when Steeler and the rest of his litter were born, which was the Sunday that the Super Bowl was played that year and these dogs were all named after NFL teams.