Finn wouldn’t let go of the criminal.
On October 5, 2016, this Hertfordshire police dog followed his handler, officer Dave Wardell, to a street in Stevenage, England, to find a young man believed to be armed. When the suspect tried to escape, Finn caught him by the leg. They both fell to the ground, and the young man pulled out a knife: he stabbed the dog in the chest and then in the head, and slashed Wardell’s hand. Even so, Finn kept his hold until backup arrived.
He survived emergency surgery, during which part of one lung was removed, and returned to service 11 weeks later. But the law treated him by a different standard: the attacker, aged 16, was convicted of criminal damage, because the law regarded police dogs as mere “tools”. Wardell refused to give up. After three years of campaigning, Finn’s Law was passed on April 8, 2019, making it an offense to cause unnecessary suffering to a service animal. Today, the law protects working dogs and horses, and its scope was later extended to Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Unfortunately, Finn died on July 27, 2023, at the age of 14, but to this day he is remembered as a brave working dog.
