A local police officer is getting recognized for his kindness and compassion after helping a family with a dog bite.
Ferdinand Police Officer, Christian Gogel, was working a night shift on Saturday, August 15th, when he received a call from the Fire Department after a false alarm.
“When the fire alarm went off, everybody rushed outside. Then the dog bit the boy on the behind after getting spooked by the chaos out front, ” he says.
Gogel says Michelle Dippel and her 10-year-old son were visiting Holiday World from Illinois and were staying Comfort Inn in Ferdinand when the incident happened.
After getting information from the dog’s owner and examining the boy’s wound, Gogel says he talked to Dippel about her options.
“I told her that she could go to the ER or urgent care. It appeared to me that it was a scratch and there were no puncture wounds. So told her she could treat it with some hydrogen peroxide, watch the scratch, and go from there,” he says.
The officer also says treating the family with kindness and compassion was easy.
“I have children and grandsons too. So I try to treat everybody with respect and think about how I would want my kids and grandsons to be treated,” he says.
Once the family returned home, Gogel reached out to Dippel to see how her son was doing.
“I called a couple of days later to check and see if she did take him to the ER or urgent care and to see how he was doing. And she said that he was doing fine and everything was great,” the officer says.
But that was not the end of the story. A few weeks later, Dippel wrote to the Ferdinand Town Council.
Gogel says receiving the compliment made him smile. He says not a lot of officers get recognized for their kind gestures.
“Not a lot of police officers get credit for what they do and it’s a little tricky out there. Be we still put one step in front of the other just like everyone else and try to do our best with what we have to work with as far as the community and different things,” he says,
Gogel says he hopes to continue serving and protecting the Ferdinand community in years to come.
