Jansky settles in as K9 officer

Montgomery County Deputy Conner Jansky is settling into his new role with the sheriff’s office.
Following the promotion of Rick Mitchell to chief deputy, Janskey has taken over Mitchell’s position on the K-9 unit, as well as taking over as handler of Riddick, a four-year-old Belgian Malinois that was born in the Czech Republic. Jansky said he’s nearing his seventh year in law enforcement, and said it was a winding road that led him to the career.
“I’ve been in law enforcement since January of 2019. I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I went to college for physical therapy and that didn’t turn out to be what I wanted it to be. My grandfather was a deputy up in Webster County. I did a couple of ride alongs here and I did some in Omaha and then decided that’s what I wanted to do,” Jansky explained. “I started with the police department here in Red Oak, and then I switched over to the sheriff’s department in September of 2021.
Jansky said serving as a K-9 deputy is what he’s been interested in since the start of his career in law enforcement.
“I actually helped out Rick and Drew Askey and some other K-9 handlers from the area. I started out being a test subject in the bite suit and stuff. I would say my field of expertise would be narcotics and K-9 is a great asset for that. So it’s just something that helps me do my job a little bit better,” commented Jansky.
Jansky said he had some initial hesitation about the transition in handlers but it proved fairly simple.
“It was kind of a big worry for me, but with Rick being a K-9 handler for 19 years, I would put Rick’s knowledge up against anybody in the country when it comes to K-9 handling. His dog was very well trained and it was a pretty smooth transition,” advised Jansky. “The only other thing that we kind of worried about is that I have two personal dogs of my own, but they get along great and they’re best buds and they play together. It went 10 times better than I expected it to.”
Jansky also said that handling a dog for K-9 service is a lot different than handling a typical pet.
“They’re basically a tool or an asset for their handler. My dog and Drew’s dog are both apprehension dogs. So we don’t necessarily treat them like a household pet that sits on the couch all day. We have to keep their mind and their physicality engaged, otherwise they do lose their edge, or they can become more aggressive towards their handler, or both. It’s all about keeping them engaged and focused on their mission at task or at hand. That way you don’t have to worry about them not doing the job when you expect them to do the job.”
Another difference between a K-9 service dog and a typical pet is how they receive rewards.
“Most police dogs are very driven towards a reward, whether that be a verbal praise or petting or a tennis ball or a Kong. My dog, Riddick, he’s very driven for his Kong. He loves it. That’s his idea of having a great time, just tossing his Kong and him fetching it and bringing it back to me. If he does what he’s supposed to and he does it right, he gets rewarded every time with his Kong. So that’s kind of how we keep them engaged because you find what they love and what they want. It’s usually a toy,” Jansky stated.
Something else unique about serving as Riddick’s handler is the fact that he and his partner are together constantly.
“People have asked me, how’s the switch over to the canine department? And I say it’s good, but there’s another aspect of it. He comes home with me, he goes to work with me. It is a liability to have other people take care of him. I’m his primary care 99.5% of the time. So you learn to basically co-exist your entire life with him because since he is an apprehension canine, it’s a liability to have anybody else take care of him or let him out or do anything with him. The dog is yours. It’s yours at work, it’s yours at home, it’s yours everywhere. I’m not complaining about it at all. I love it because Riddick’s a great dog, but that’s probably the hardest transition you learn when you become a canine handler,” said Jansky.
Jansky and Askey and their dogs are always on call for canine deployment. So even if off duty, they can get called out by dispatch. His first call out led to a bust.
“They had methamphetamine and cocaine and they had just tried to steal a bunch of stuff from the Do-It Center. If a canine indicates on a vehicle, that gives us probable cause to search it. That helped us recover some stolen property and the drugs. I’ve had a couple other deployments where other officers or other deputies call for me and then I run the dog and we get the probable cause to search the vehicle and we found some methamphetamine on a couple of different traffic stops.”
Jansky said Riddick is a very, good dog, energetic, and very driven by his job.
“He loves getting in the vehicle. He knows when I put my uniform on, it’s go time,” stated Jansky.
Jansky added there’s a lot of training involved to keep Riddick in peak shape.
“The courts have ruled you have to do so much continuous training every month, and you have to do a yearly certification with them. You have to keep up on your training to have a well-rounded police dog. Even when being in law enforcement, I didn’t realize how much it took, and I’m sure the public doesn’t realize how much it takes. If you see a canine handler out there and their dog’s actually doing the job right, it’s because they put in countless hours on duty and off duty to make sure their dog performs the job it’s supposed to,”advised Jansky.
While born in the Czech Republic, Jansky said Riddick was initially trained at Blue Streak Canine out of Arkansas before being sent to I80 Canine in Cass County, where he was trained under Kyle Quist, a former police officer and K-9 handler for the Red Oak Police Department years ago. Jansky said he trained with Quist when he went through his handler school training back in April of this year.