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Canine Coincidences

Ogden police chief’s family pet lost; found by Weber county attorney

BY VICTORIA JOHNSON

Standard-Examiner staff vjohnson@standard.net

    OGDEN — Police Chief Jon Greiner and his family thought they’d lost one of their clan when their 9-month-old puppy wandered off on a three day adventure that included a jaunt with the county prosecutor.

    Kato, a miniature schnauzer-Maltese mix, and the family’s 10-year-old schnauzer, Piper, bolted out the front door last Saturday morning and took off running down the street. Piper was found within minutes, but Kato was nowhere to be found.

    Coyotes, foxes and even cougars are known to roam the hills above the Greiners’ house, near Beus Pond, and the family was concerned about 10-pound Kato roaming on his lonesome.

    “We were all worried about this puppy that doesn’t know squat,” Greiner said.

    Greiner, his wife, and his two live-at-home teenagers searched for Kato to no avail.

    As it turns out, Kato caught sight of another local criminal justice player, Weber County Attorney Mark DeCaria and his wife, Mary, who were setting off on a hike a few blocks above the Greiner home.

    “This little dog was out there, and he was just bouncing around,” Mark DeCaria said.

    The DeCarias live in the area, but did not know whose dog it was. As they started walking the trail, the little dog followed.

    “We said, ‘No. Go home, go home,’ ” he said, but the dog was relentless. “He followed us on a three-mile hike in difficult conditions and deep snow,” he said. DeCaria said he and his wife let Kato follow along, occasionally stopping to allow him to catch up or picking him up when he had trouble negotiating the terrain. “We just accepted that the dog was going to follow us, and we’ve had other dogs adopt us on that trail,” he said. When they reached the end of the trail, they started knocking on doors to try to figure out who the dog belonged to. He didn’t find out until a few days later that it was the Greiner family dog. “It’s just one of those unbelievable coincidences that it was Greiner’s dog,” he said. When he and Mary knocked on one door, they found another coincidence. The woman who answered was a witness in a case DeCaria prosecuted several years ago. The woman agreed to take care of the dog and search for the owner. She held on to the dog for several days and apparently never saw the fliers the Greiners put up around the neighborhood. On Tuesday she dropped Kato and her kids off at her father’s house for him to baby sit. He called the Ogden City Animal Shelter and they, flier in hand, told him to call the Greiners. Greiner’s wife, Telitha, drove out to pick up Kato, who was soon reunited with the family. Greiner admitted that Kato did not have a tag on his collar — they had gotten him a new collar a week before and forgot to change the tags. He had a microchip though, and had he been taken to the shelter, employees would have been able to read the chip and obtain the owner’s information.

    In the end, the Greiner’s were just happy to have their puppy back after having lost another dog to a heart attack in the spring.

    “We weren’t ready to lose this one,” Greiner said.

From the Standard Examiner “Letters to the Editor”

Owning ugly dog proves chief’s compassion

    For quite a while I have followed, with great interest, articles written about action taken by Jon Greiner in his role as Ogden police chief and later as a state senator. During many articles I have looked for a note of true compassion displayed or exhibited by Chief Greiner.

    Just about the time when I had concluded Chief Greiner was not endowed by an over abundance of compassion, along comes the story of the lost Greiner puppy (Dec. 22, “Ogden police chief’s family pet lost; found by Weber County attorney”). In reading the story noting how quickly County Attorney Mark DeCaria and his wife, Mary, acted in getting the ugly puppy back to its rightful owners, because they probably thought it was ugly too, I have concluded that anyone who could love a dog of any age that is as ugly as the picture of the Greiner dog, just has to be loaded with love and compassion.

    So, I hereby apologize for my previous thinking that Chief Greiner lacked these most important qualities. Go get ’em, big guy.

    Robert Dabling

    Farr West