There’s a funeral today for a dog in Davenport and a lot of people plan to attend. Drug-sniffing canine officer “Hershey” had worked with the police department since 1993 according to officer Don Gano.He says “that dog had a nose,” and loved to find dope — as proven by the fact that he was responsible for 7-Million dollars in drug seizures during his career on the force. Early on, Hershey worked with Officer Dale Sievert, who considered him a full partner. Sievert says the dog had the run of the office, “just like one of the guys,” and rode in his patrol car, always eager to go to work because finding dope was a game to him, and he loved what he did. Hershey was the department’s first dog trained for sniffing drugs, and he didn’t have any other duty. The dog did have a good bark, he admits, and if a suspect was unruly Sievert would tell him to bark and sometimes it helped keep them in line…though he said all Hershey would have done was “lick them to death.” The dog will be laid to rest in a new section of Davenport’s Oakdale cemetery, the first to be buried in a section devoted to police dogs.
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