Storm Lake, IA (KICD) — Storm Lake’s police dog has a new handler. Mitch McDonald left the department for a private-sector job, leaving Ozzie without a master. Officer Mitchell Fritz recently completed intense training in Humboldt on drug detection, obedience, tacking, article recovering, building search, and suspect apprehension, and continues to train outside of normal work hours each week. He says he and Ozzy have bonded already, and the dog knows what to do simply from Fritz’s body language. Fritz says he has always enjoyed animals, having trained his own hunting dog from a pup.

Fritz has been with the city of Storm Lake since 2020. Ozzy has seniority having come onboard in 2019.