Waushara sheriff returns K9 payments after watchdog probe

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Waushara County Sheriff Walter Zuehlke returned $1,245 to the county Tuesday in payments he received for care of his law enforcement K9 after it died last year, one day after The Badger Project published an investigation outlining those payments.

Zuehlke received $415 payments in September, October and November last year, according to county records. His dog, a German Shepherd named Argo, died in August of 2024.

In a statement posted to the sheriff’s office’s Facebook page, Zuehlke said he notified county administration when Argo died.

“I was unaware of the continued stipend payments for Sept. to Nov. 2024 until the release of The Badger Project article,” he wrote.

Waushara County Administrator Megan Kapp confirmed that Zuehlke reimbursed the county on Tuesday. She said the post-death payments were an “administrative oversight.”

Asked why Zuehlke wasn’t instructed to return the overpayments once the county realized its mistake, Kapp said, “I don’t have any answer to that question other than it was an administrative oversight.”

She noted that she did not start in the role of county administrator until after the last payment was made to Zuehlke in November.

“I’m not certain why it wasn’t corrected at this time,” she said.

The investigation by The Badger Project found that Zuehlke, a longtime K9 officer before he was elected in 2018, had stopped doing law enforcement trainings with Argo after he became sheriff, but continued taking county payments intended for the care and maintenance of law enforcement K9s. Other K9 deputies in the office also receive the stipends, but they all have continued with the trainings, records show.

The Badger Project estimates Zuehlke got more than $20,000 in K9 care payments after quitting the law enforcement trainings.

Zuehlke said he transitioned the dog to a public relations role with the sheriff’s office and that it “came to work with me every day until he retired” to meet the public and accept donations for the K9 program, but two former employees said they rarely saw the dog in the office, especially in its last few years.

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.