Police dog back on job after life-threatening injury

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Officer 1st Class Chris Strevig shows the scar from the wound K-9 Officer Jett suffered in June during a news conference Tuesday at the Baltimore County Police Department’s 12th Precinct in Dundalk. – Rachel Fus/For The Examiner

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - Jett leaped out and sunk his teeth into the man’s arm, never letting go even when he was spun in a circle.

“Get that bad boy!” shouted Jett’s handler, Officer 1st Class Chris Strevig.

“Stop fighting the dog!” Strevig warned the man, posing as a suspect, during a demonstration Tuesday at the Baltimore County police station in Dundalk.

Jett, a K-9 officer in the police department, came back to work Sunday after recovering from a life-threatening wound.

Less than a month ago, Jett was lying in an emergency room, a deep gash on his front leg from a piece of barbed wire standing between him and a suspect.

Jett and Strevig were wrapping up a search for a suspect with warrants June 4 behind a building on the 8100 block of Philadelphia Road.

Then, “he yelped, and I never heard a yelp like that,” Strevig said.

Strevig found a pool of blood underneath the dog.

He carried the 75-pound black German shepherd in his arms to the police truck and rushed Jett to the Pet ER in Towson.

“It looked like someone got massacred in the back of the truck,” Strevig said.

“It was like watching a kid bleed out in front of you.”

Jett is one of about 30 dogs in the county’s police department, which, with 25 dog handlers, has one of the largest K-9 units in the country.

Most dogs, including Jett, are trained for patrolling and locating drugs, said Lt. David Folderauer, commander of the K-9 unit. In addition, the county has a bloodhound for locating missing people and another dog for finding

bodies.

The dogs are “just like police officers,” he said.

Jett has served the department since February 2007 on many drug busts and found a runaway child in a homemade teepee in the woods, Strevig said.

The dog, who was originally named Emil and imported from the Czech Republic, is considered a family member and plays with Strevig’s young children at home, he said.

“Every dog is important to someone, but the fact that this is a working officer and serves all of us, it’s really special,” said Carrie Bonacorsi, the emergency care veterinarian who treated Jett at the Pet ER.

carrie.wells@baltimoreexaminer.com

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