Herkimer's Tail Was Wagging When the Officer Fired. Seven Years Later, Loveland Paid $675,000.

Herkimer was 14 months old, a Staffordshire terrier and boxer mix, and on June 29, 2019, he was with his family during a firewood delivery in Loveland, Colorado. Officer Matthew "Mat" Grashorn of the Loveland Police Department arrived on a report of a suspicious vehicle. What he found was a family and their dog.

The body camera Grashorn wore recorded what happened next, and the footage became the central fact of the case: Herkimer approaching, tail wagging, when Grashorn shot him. No warning came first.

Herkimer died four days later.

The Loveland Police Department reviewed the shooting and found no policy violation. Hold those two facts next to each other: a camera showing a wagging tail and a shot fired without warning, and an internal review concluding that none of it broke the department's rules. Either the review misjudged the encounter, or the department's policy genuinely permitted what the video shows. Both possibilities indict the institution — and the policy changes the city would eventually be required to make point toward the answer.

Herkimer's family sued, and the case met qualified immunity — the judge-made doctrine that shields officers from civil damages suits unless the right they violated was clearly established. It did not end this one. The Tenth Circuit denied Grashorn qualified immunity, a federal appeals court ruling that the case against him could go forward.

In June 2026, seven years after Herkimer approached a police officer with his tail wagging, Loveland paid a $675,000 settlement — reported as the largest police dog-shooting settlement in Colorado history. The settlement also mandated policy changes and recurring training for the department.

The ledger

The department cleared its officer; a federal appeals court refused to. The taxpayers of Loveland — not Officer Grashorn — paid the $675,000. The policy changes and recurring training that might have mattered on that June day in 2019 arrived seven years later, as terms of a settlement, because a lawsuit forced them — not because the department chose them.

And Officer Grashorn remained employed. Through the internal review that cleared him, through the appeals court that would not, through the largest settlement of its kind in Colorado history, he kept his job. "Grashorn remained employed" — that phrase is the entire reported disciplinary record of the killing of Herkimer.

Update — June 16, 2026

In June 2026 — seven years after Herkimer was shot — the city of Loveland agreed to pay $675,000 to settle the family's federal civil rights lawsuit. Sarah Schielke, the attorney for Wendy Love and Jay Hamm, said in a press release that it is the largest amount paid by a police department in a dog shooting case in Colorado history, and among the largest in the country.

The settlement also requires recurring officer training on dog encounters and updates to the department's dog-encounter policy. It resolves the case without a trial, with the family agreeing not to pursue further legal action against the city.

Getting there took seven years. An internal review found the shooting justified. Grashorn argued he was immune under qualified immunity; a federal judge ruled that a jury could reasonably find he was not in imminent danger when he fired, and in 2025 the Tenth Circuit upheld that ruling. It is worth being precise about what that did and did not settle: a settlement admits no liability and establishes no rule for anyone else. The appellate decision is narrower than a new standard — it held that this officer was not entitled to immunity at this stage, and that a jury could have heard the case.

"For seven years, this family has been told by LPD's chain of command that what Grashorn did was reasonable, was within policy, and required no changes," Schielke said. "But today, the size of this long-awaited settlement and its terms prove otherwise." Love said in the same press release that there would never be true justice for Herkimer while Grashorn remained employed as a police officer.

Loveland did not immediately respond to Reason's request for comment. In a statement to CBS News Colorado, the city's public relations team said the city and its police department "remain committed to the continuous evaluation of policies, training, and practices intended to support public safety, transparency, and community trust."

The city has paid. The policy will change. No discipline of Grashorn has been reported.