By Jodi Miesen
WKTV Contributing Writer

It was after a mom approached Kent County Sheriff Officer Krystal Stuart that she knew just how much K9 officer Axel had meant to the community.

Axel died of an undiagnosed heart condition while tracking a suspect in August of 2021. The mother tracked Stuart down in the sheriff department’s parking lot. She told Stuart that her nine-year-old son cried when he saw the news about Axel because he thought of Axel as “their dog.”

“And that just broke my heart because it wasn’t just me that was feeling it,” Stuart said. “It was all these other people that were upset and crying over my dog. You know, and when you have a personal dog, you have your friends and family and people that are sad about it.

“But on such a large scale. I could never have thought that that would have ever happened, that he touched so many lives.”

Not a match made in heaven

Because of her love for animals, Stuart was intrigued by the Kent County K9 Unit and joined in 2019. She had no idea what that was going to entail.

Then came the 63-pound German Shepard named Axel. He was just 16-months-old at the time and what many would call a second-time handler dog, not one that a first-time handler such as Stuart should have been assigned. Axel was to be the first explosive detection dog for the Kent County Sheriff’s Department.

However the handler and the K9’s relationship was a rollercoaster from the start.

“The beginning was horrible,” she said. “I had not picked Axel. Axel was actually my third pick. I passed him up because he came into the testing site just digging his claws into the dirt and letting out this Banshee cry…I was like, ‘Wow, I don’t want to deal with that. I’m not gonna. I don’t have the patience to deal with that dog’. So, I passed him up.”

But in the end, Axel became her dog. She was stuck with him. Now came the part of figuring out how to work with each other.

Building the team

“He was a very dominant dog, a very aggressive dog,” she said. “We had to figure out how to respect each other. It wasn’t going to be me ruling over him or him ruling over me. We had to have this mutual respect and I didn’t know how to do that in the beginning. So, him and I battled for the first six months.”

Working dogs such as Axel come with a high drive which is necessary for police work. That drive also comes with its own set of challenges.

“We want dogs that are not going to give up,” she said. “Dogs that are going to continue working until basically we tell them to stop, or they are forced to ‘stop.’

“These dogs are constantly doing something. So, when they’re not working, they can get naughty, because they just want to be working.”

‘Not what I signed up for’

By December of 2019, things got so bad Stuart began questioning if she wanted to continue as a handler. She had experience with dogs, grew up with them and even had two at home before she added Axel to the mix. She also had a husband and two small children, ages 2 and 5, at the time.

“It was just a lot on my family,” she recalled. “It was a lot on me because he wasn’t a good house dog. He didn’t use too much energy to be around the kids. He didn’t get along with my husband very well. And I was like, ‘Yeah, this is not what I really thought I was signing up for.’”

Stuart said the two were living and working together, 24 -7. They were always together. Unlike with a regular partner, who gets to go home at the end of the day, they never got a break from each other. What made things worse is Axel identified Stuart with the job. He always wanted to be working and he didn’t know how to turn it off.

“We have some dogs on our team that when they come home, they can just be couch potatoes and just lay down and relax,” she said. “Axel was not one of those dogs. Because when he saw me, he was like, ‘What are we doing?’, and he was always on it. And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, we are literally just going outside to go to the bathroom, like just calm down.’”

The turning point

But December also was a turning point as Stuart got some help from trained professionals.

 

“I talked to a trainer and it was kind of like a come to Jesus moment,” she said. “They really helped me understand how to work with a dog like that in a way that I understood. And once I started applying the things that he had taught me; had told me about. We started building from there.”

By the time Axel passed away, Stuart said the pair were coming together and neither had to think about what the other was doing. They were working as a team. Stuart acknowledged that Axel still tested her patience, but things weren’t as hard anymore.

He did what he loved

It was in August of 2021, while working the first call of an overtime shift, things went bad very quickly. Stuart and Axel had responded to a call in Sparta about a possible home invasion. The suspect had fled the scene and Axel with Stuart began to track.

“It was very hot out that day,” she said. “We found one shoe. So, I knew we were on it. I don’t know, a couple 100 yards and we found the other shoe and I’m like we’re still on it. (The suspect is) stripping clothes, you know, either losing them in the thick brush or just stripping down.”

The team made it to an open area of a lawn and Stuart could tell that Axel was hot. She got water from some people in the area. Recognizing that they were closing in on the suspect and knowing another dog was on its way to relieve Axel because of the heat, Stuart said she felt OK wrapping up the track. They were eight minutes into it.

“After he got water, he jumped back up and start tracking again,” Stuart said. “And I was like, ‘Hey’ I’m like, ‘We’re done.’ So, we had to get out to the field.He picked up the track again and started tracking up the field. And I was like, ‘Dude, we’re done like stop.’ So, I yelled at him and was like, ‘stop!’

“But these are those dogs. They want to finish the game and they want to keep working. So, after I told him to stop, he collapsed.”

An undiagnosed condition found to be the cause

Stuart didn’t know what had happened until a necropsy, an animal autopsy, was performed. She was later told he died of an undiagnosed heart condition. Axel was three-years-old and weighed 96 pounds when he died. He had grown into a strong, muscular, powerful German Shepard.

There was nothing that could have done to prevent it. Stuart said it was explained to her that it was similar to when an athlete dies unexpectedly after vigorous activity. In the end, Axel died doing what he loved.

Stuart says she took his passing hard. He was more than a pet. Axel was such a big part of her life and for that reason, there were no breaks from the grief.

“I was at home and then I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I feel him here. I want to go to work.’” she said. “And then I have an empty cruiser…I couldn’t get away from it.

“And so that was one of the hardest things I think I had to deal with.”

An outpouring of love from the community

Axel was connected to the community. Every morning in the field he could have been seen doing obedience training or just playing ball. A week before Axel’s death, Stuart was working as a school resource officer for the Cedar Springs School District for the district’s first week of school.

Because of Axel’s connection to the community and being part of the Kent County Sheriff’s Department, the toughest part for her children was that Axel’s death was so publicized.

“When our personal dog passed away, it was hard because that was their dog,” she said. “But then when Axel passed away, everybody in the community knew. And so, teachers, principals, friends were all coming up to them.”

That outpouring included a Rockford artist, Kathie Van Hekken, who offered to create a 44- by 44- color pencil drawing of Axel, which is on display at this year’s ArtPrize at First (Park) Congregational Church, 10 E. Place Pl. NE. Part of the exhibit includes educating the public about the Kent County Sheriff’s Department’s K9 Unit, which is donation based.

A little about working dogs

There are currently 10 K9s covering all of Kent County for the sheriff’s department. Stuart said the department relies on the K9 Unit to make situations less dangerous and more hands on for officers. They can detect explosives, track suspects, secure buildings, or be used as a compliance tool with Stuart adding some people are more likely to comply when you get a dog out and they start barking.

“And it helps officers in different situations as well, especially with people who are trying to run or fight, you know, our deputies,” she said. “So they do a lot in the community. And I think with Axel passing, we really saw how much the people in the community recognize that.”

The new partner: Meet Kai

Stuart decided to stay on with the K9 Unit and this May a German Shepherd Belgian Malians, weighing in at 20 pounds less than Axel, named Kai became her new K9 partner.  She started training Kai in July and he has been on the road with her since the beginning of August.

“He has more energy than Axel, which I didn’t think was possible, because Axel was crazy!,” Stuart said. “This dog is just as crazy! And both of them are bulls in a China shop.”

There is also a bit of resemblance.

“We just took pictures for our calendar fundraiser that we’re doing for 2023,” Stuart said. “I have a picture of Axel in the background and I have Kai on a table and they look oddly familiar, like similar. If you didn’t know, you would think it was almost the same dog,” then quickly adding, “Kai, he is his own dog.”

Axel left his mark, helping her to be a better handler for Kai, whose is progressing in his training. It usually takes about two years of training before a dog like Axel or Kai are solid work dogs.

“He set me up for success with my new dog,” Stuart said of Axel. “He taught me patience, how dogs tick. How they work. What to let them get away with and what not to let them get away with. He taught me all that and so I wouldn’t be the handler I am today without the experiences that I went through with Axel.”

Axel may not have been the dog Stuart wanted but he ended up being the dog that left his mark on the heart of his community as well as his handler.