One of Nanaimo's most prolific police officers is hanging up his leash.
Boomer, a pure-bred German shepherd with Nanaimo RCMP's canine unit, has retired from active service, the detachment announced in a news release Tuesday.
"We were never the best looking team, never the most polished, but we tried hard, trained hard, and gave it all we had every time the phone rang, and we were rewarded with success," Const. Clay Wurzinger, Boomer's handler, said in a statement.
The police dog has a lengthy list of successes since he joined the force in 2011, including two arrests made on his final night of service.
Mounties say on his last night, Boomer helped capture a man accused in a string of break-and-enters, and then went on to track and catch a person wanted in relation to a stabbing.
Over the years, he's helped find missing persons, including an elderly woman who was missing for five days, caught a suspect who blasted a Mountie with pepper spray and tracked and captured a suspect in a violent assault, and police say those are just some of "countless" operations he's assisted in.
Now that his days on the job are over, the detachment said Boomer will now get a much-deserved rest while he spends his days as Wurzinger's family pet.
For the next three months, Wurzinger will train his new police services dog Jerry at the RCMP national training centre in Innisfail, Alta.
