A collie named Garp escaped his handlers at Newark Airport on Tuesday morning and led more than a dozen PAPD cops on a 45-minute chase — then got stuck in the mud and had to be rescued by two officers in a rowboat, sources said.
The canine caper commenced at about 8:05 a.m., when Port Authority police responded to a report of a “loose dog” at🍎 the pet-handling center at United Airlines in Terminal C.
Garp, who is 4, was being moved from a smaller crate into a larger one to prepare for his owner’s scheduled 10:30 a.m. trip to Shanghai when he suddenly bolted, said owner Kitter Spater, 43, of Massachusetts.
“When I went in to see him off, I heard he’d made a run for it,”🐷 Spater told The Post.
Spater, who was traveling with his wife, Erica, 42, and theirဣ two daughters, Annika, 5, and Georgia, 9, said that once Garp bolted, he began running around through the airport grounds, darting into and out of꧃ car traffic and various parking lots.
Spater sai🐼d he gave chase – along with about a dozen cops – but Garp remained elusive, continually moving from one terminal to another.
“I think I ran about 4 miles chasing him. First, I went to the Hertz car rental area, where someone said they’d seen him. I didn’t see him there, so I ra🔯n to Terminal A, then Terminal B and then back to Hertz,” Spater noted.
Finally, about 45 minutes later, cops tracked Garp down to a rental car lot located next to a gas station on Brewster Road and Lingbergh Road. But he then strayed “into a flooded marsh area and was stuck in mud and unable to walk or run out of the ditch,” a🍌ccording to Joe Pentangelo, a Port Authority Police spokesman🔥.
Port Authority Police Officers Zach Steinfeld and Francisco Romero boarded a rowboat with an animal snare and paddled about 50 yards to Garp’s side.
Officer Ste🧜infeld wrapped the snare around Garp and pulled h🐟im onto the rowboat.
A mud-encas𝓡ed Garp had to be hosed down at a nearby car wash and toweled down, Spater said.
The tired, dirty and relieved pooch was reunited with 💫Spater and his relieved family m𓄧oments later.
“He was pretty excite▨d to be returned. He went running up – and my daughters began to hug him,” Spater recalled.
Spater owns a pet product company, Kurgo, based in Salsbury, MA, and he and his family were traveling to Shanghai to seꦬt up an office there, where they plan to spend the next year.
Garp’s mad dash caused them to miss their flight, but Spater wasn’t too upset, particularly since United has agreed to pick up the cost for Garp’s ticket, which is expected to cost about $700.
“It was an unfortunate mistake, but these things ha꧅ppen🌠. We were just very happy to get him back,” a relieved Spater added.