The Good Life – July-August 2018

LOCAL HERO // SERGEANT NIELSEN AND K-9 DISCO
"He knows how to do so many things. You have to keep
that at a high level or that skillset will fade." – Nielsen
“He came out of the car and cleaned up the mess.”
Along with that heroic save, Disco has two of the largest
drug seizures in the history of the state.
“He’s got many street apprehensions and bitten people. He’s
been used by a U.S. Marshal Task Force to go into a house
to get a guy who was hiding and by our patrol officers to
go into a house into an attic to get a guy who was holding
someone hostage,” Nielsen said. “He’s been hit, kicked and
punched, all while doing his job. He’s done a lot of cool
things in his career.”
As his handler, Nielsen has to determine whether it is wise
to bring Disco with on a mission.
“I’m not going to bring him to a call where there’s a guy with
a gun because that would be a suicide mission. The guy’s
going to shoot him. The handler is trained to know when to
deploy his dog,” Nielsen said. “Ultimately, I’m responsible
for him and everybody around him. If I let him go and I don’t
know what’s in a building, he doesn’t necessarily know who
the bad guy is. His senses are his nose, and his mission is to
find the human and get them. All of it is on the handler and
they have to be cognitive of where they should be deploying
the dog.”
While the job brings innumerable dangers, there are also
more lighthearted missions for which the teammates have
put in much time and energy. Nielsen and Disco have
competed in four regional police dog competitions where
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