BROWN COUNTY, WI (WTAQ) – Recovering K9 Officer Pyro was out-and-about at the Brown County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday as the pup is nearing a full-return to the force.
The occasion was a press conference in which PMI Entertainment Group donated nearly $1,700 to help cover the pups medical expenses.
Pyro made an appearance, along with his handler, Green Bay officer Scott Salzmann, who says the recovery process is progressing well.
“He’s one-hundred-percent back to the old Pyro,” explains Officer Salzmann. “He looks at me everyday like to say, hey, I want to go back to work, lets do this, and I have to be the one that kind of has to break the bad news to him and say not today.”
The recovery process started nearly a month ago to the day.
Pyro was stabbed while assisting in an arrest on Sunday, April 7.
The wounds he sustained from the multiple stabbings were severe and immediate surgery was needed in order to address nerve damage.
According to him, the tricky part of Pyro’s rehabilitation has been the nature of the injuries in which he is attempting to recover from.
“We’re looking at nerve damage, so it’s a minimum of six weeks,” he explains. “We’re just on the four week mark now, we got a couple more weeks before they say that the nerves can even kind of be healed.”
And while Pyro still is a handful of weeks away from a full-recovery, that hasn’t prevented him and his handler from trying to get back into the swing of things.
“We’re back to doing a little bit of patrol work for training, not a lot, but we’re back full force in narcotics detection and he’s riding with me daily and we’re back to work,” says Officer Salzmann.
And in terms of energy, Pyro is packing a punch, just like normal.
“He’s a Belgian Malinois,” explains Officer Salzmann. “Anyone that has a Malinois knows that they have some crazy amounts of energy.”
But full-energy or not, it’ll take more time and rehab before Pyro is back on the force chasing down bad guys all over Green Bay.
“When you get back out on the road and do live deployments, you obviously never know what the outcome is going to be,” he notes.
