A year-and-a-half after the unofficial ambassador of the Fond du Lac Police Department retired, K9 Officer Grendel was laid to rest Wednesday.
With the dog’s health failing, Grendel’s handler, Officer Ryan Williams, made one of the most difficult decisions of his life.
For eight years, Officer Williams had a loyal partner. Known publicly as K9 Officer Grendel, he called him Rico at home.
“The bond that you form is unbelievable,” according to Williams. “I always say, my wife makes fun of me now, he goes home with me, he goes to work with me, he’s with me more than my wife is. I spend all of my time with him.”
That bond was only made stronger when both were critically wounded after being shot in March of 2011 and returned to work together just two months later.
Grendel retired in April of last year, but nerve problems in his back and damaged nerves in a hind leg made life difficult for the dog. He began to lose control of his bodily functions, and Williams knew what he had to do.
“It’s a super hard decision,” says Williams. “And honestly I’ve been struggling with it up until this day.”
So, before taking 12-year-old Grendel to be put down, where he’ll be buried in a casket Williams made for his hero with his dad, the partners visited one of the K9’s favorite places, and let Grendel be Grendel.
“He’s a police dog and he’ll always be a police dog, and one of his favorite things to do is to bite, to bite and you’re going to see it. He’s still going to have the love, love of it. He gets excited every time he came out here to these training grounds, and I wasn’t going to deny him that one last chance to get out here,” says Williams.
Grendel will be laid to rest in the pet section of Rienzi Cemetery. He’ll be in good company as several other police K9s are buried here as well.
Williams says, “It’s a great place. It’s a very historic cemetery and now it’s going to hold another piece of history, of Fond du Lac’s history, of this amazing dog.”
K9 Officer Grendel, end of watch, September 30, 2015.
