MHPS K9 Team/Twitter

By Chris Brown

A surprise from Ontario

Former MHPS K9 officer ‘blown away’ by portrait of departed partner

Mar 18, 2021 | 5:30 PM

MEDICINE HAT, AB – They were constant companions for more than a decade, and that continues even after one of them passed away in January.

Sgt. Clarke White and Police Service Dog Duco kept the streets of Medicine Hat safe from 2009 until 2015.

“He kind of gained a reputation that if he was coming to the scene someone was getting caught, a bad guy that had run away was going to get caught if there was any chance of it,” says White, remembering Duco as highly driven, motivated dog. “And just like that you take his harness off at the end of the day and it’s like you turned off a switch and he just becomes the most gentle pet that you could imagine.”

White says it took about a year or year and a half for Duco to settle into retirement but the family slowly watched him go from a “hard-nosed working dog that wasn’t afraid of anything to a gentle giant who was lying around the house and wrestling with the kids.”

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He had and gave a fantastic life full of companionship until early this year.

Duco passed away on Jan. 30.

White says he was overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from the community.

MHPS K9 Team/Twitter

Out in Ontario, artist Nicole Wilmot was working on her own show of support.

About a year ago she did a portrait for two Durham, Ont. officers lost their police dogs and she kept going from there.

Since then she’s done and sent paintings of police dogs across Canada, all on her own dime.

“I’m not a rich person but I feel rich doing this,” she said.

Wilmot has a German shepherd of her own.

“She’s totally captured my heart and gave me a 180 let me tell to you,” she says. “I know how dog parents feel and I know what it feels like when they lose their pet. It’s losing part of your family, right? So if I can help out in any little way…”

For Wilmot it’s also a way to thank all police officers for all the work they do.

“I know they get a lot of flack from the public and negative press and I want them to know that people do appreciate them and we do care and I for one really love my police officers from B.C. all the way to Newfoundland.”

White said with the job police officers do, it’s nice to get a reminder like that every now and then.

“When I received the painting in the mail completely unexpected from a complete stranger on the other side of the country I was blown away. There’s no way else to put it,” he says. “It’s just an incredible kind gesture from somebody. It’s things like that that make you realize how good this world is and how many good people are in this world.”

White says the portrait has had a permanent place on the kitchen countertop since it arrived and the family now refers to it as Duco.

–With files from Chantal Wagner and Scott Roblin