A Happy LEO Story

After the Officer Down and budget cut stories I read on a police wives forum, this story was a nice change and I wanted to share.

A thunderbolt clapped Wednesday night, and Bear the police dog, apparently spooked by the noise, took off, leaping over a fence and into the night.

He wasn't seen again until Sunday morning, when a man walking to a hardware store spotted him near a cemetery on the border between Evergreen Park and Chicago.

Bear looked up and cocked his head quizzically, Howard Overton said. "I said, 'That looks like the dog on the news.' "

Overton flagged down a nearby police car, and a few minutes later, the officer tracked Bear down. A scan of the microchip in his neck confirmed his identity.

By midday, the 2 1/2 -year-old German shepherd was reunited with his handler, Canine Unit Officer Rick King. At a news conference Sunday afternoon, Bear, who panted happily as he soaked up the attention from reporters, appeared to have suffered few effects from his days away from home.

"He's a little shaggy and a little dirty," King said. "But otherwise, he seems fine."

King took Bear out into the backyard of his home in the 3800 block of West 109th Street about 10:30 p.m. during a break in Wednesday's thunderstorms to allow the dog to relieve himself.

Then, rolling thunder startled him, and he suddenly headed for the corner of the yard, where a neighbor's 5-foot wooden fence meets King's fence; climbed it; and disappeared.

King said he had slept about five hours since Bear vanished and had followed up calls of found dogs from as far north as Montrose Avenue.

"It's like your child. Animal lovers will know what I'm talking about," King said.

King said the dog was most likely hunting small animals in the wooded areas of the Far Southwest Side.

"He's a little hunter," he said.

McClatchy-Tribune News Service