True Stories #400 - The Good Shepherd

Finn the police dog was horribly injured by an assailant. His story changed the laws in England, and it also warmed the hearts of millions.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'm Seth Andrews, and what you're about to hear is
a true story. The dog was terribly injured, but would
the dog get justice? Now? Hang on, stick with me.
The journey that we are about to take is a

(00:24):
difficult one, but this is a story with an inspiring ending.
The year was twenty sixteen in Hertfordshire County in the
east of England. Policeman Dave Wardell was one of the
officers who'd been called to an incident in Stevenitch. Wardell
served as a canine handler with the Police dog Unit,

(00:47):
and his charge was a German shepherd named Finn. The
dispatcher had said there was a male suspect believed to
be armed considered dangerous. Wardell and other officers showed up
up and Dave quickly saw the suspect. The man quickly
realized he had been spotted. He took off. Dave shouted

(01:08):
for the man to halt, but of course he did not,
and so Finn was set into action. The dog quickly
overran this male in his teens as the guy was
trying to clear a fence. In accordance with his training,
Finn grabbed the suspect by the leg both fell down

(01:29):
to the ground. There was a terrible fight, a fierce struggle,
and this suspect had a knife. As Officer Wardell appeared
at the scene, the knife was brought down upon the dog,
stabbing Finn in the chest and then slashing across his head.
And yet Finn never gave up his grip, not until

(01:51):
the violent a fender was disarmed and arrested, and this
knife wielding criminal was removed from the streets, but Finn
was in terrible shape. Quickly, Dave and the other officers
lifted him up, put him in the police car and
rushed him to a veterinary surgeon. The situation was touch

(02:12):
and go. Finn's wounds were severe, and yet despite having
to have a damaged portion of his lung removed, this
German shepherd pulled through. Thanks to a strong constitution and
the great care of caregivers, Finn's body would heal, and

(02:32):
only eleven weeks later he was back on the job.
Not long after that, this dog would celebrate his eighth birthday,
which is an advanced age for a German shepherd, and
so Finn was officially retired into a good life of rest.
In March of twenty seventeen. The assailant was a sixteen

(02:55):
year old boy out of South London. He was brought
into juvenile court was convicted of assault to cause bodily harm,
but his conviction was not about the stabbing of Finn.
The court's ruling related to a superficial knife wound on
Officer Wardell's hand. This convicted criminal was given only eight

(03:18):
months detention in a Youth of Fender institution, and not
because he had stabbed a dog, but because he had
harmed a person. Why did the courts not charge bodily
harm as related to Finn Finn was an officer on duty. Well,
the reason is, as the laws were written at the time,

(03:40):
dogs were not considered in the context of flesh and
blood victims. They were considered property as if somebody had
smashed a car or torched a shed, they had damaged
property and so the charges and restitution would be different.
Finn's case exposed a gape whole in the justice system

(04:02):
when non human blood was being spilled through violent crime. Well,
when the public heard about this, people were not happy,
and it wasn't long until an online petition was started.
It immediately gained traction. The public demanded a legal updates
with something that petition Steiners were calling Finn's Law, and

(04:25):
that petition quickly had more than one hundred twenty seven
thousand signatures demanding that the injuring of emergency service animals
bring the more stern charge not for property damage but
for aggravated offence. As a result, the Animal Welfare Act
twenty nineteen would soon be passed, and then Finn's Law

(04:50):
would be unanimously passed into other parts of Europe. Finn
himself was given an Animal of the Year award at
the House of Law Words, among many other honors. In
May of twenty twenty, he was named ambassador for the
charity the Thin Blue Paw Foundation, which supports retired police

(05:11):
dogs after their terms of service are done. The average
lifespan of a German shepherd is said to be nine
to thirteen years. The retired Finn lived in comfort and
safety for six years after his final patrol, and he
passed away peacefully in his sleep on the twenty seventh

(05:33):
of July twenty twenty three, at the age of fourteen.
In July of this year, on the two year anniversary
of his death, a statue of Finn was unveiled. The
public had donated more than forty thousand British pounds for
this remarkable statue, carved by artist Susie Marsh and fashioned

(05:56):
over the course of eleven months. He could have easily
died on that terrible day in twenty sixteen. Then, yet
we know that dogs can be incredibly resilient and loyal
and heroic. Almost a decade after he was stabbed so
horribly in the chest and face, and after he mended

(06:19):
and served and retired and inspired, Finn the German Shepherd
is now memorialized in bronze as one of the most
decorated police dogs in history. And that's a true story

(06:43):
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