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DUCHESNE — Packing for a possible 3-week camping trip can be quite a task.
“Tent, sleeping bag, my pads, clothes, and a snack bag” said Daniel Cline. “The bag gets pretty heavy after a while.”
Now Cline, who is a firefighter fighting the Dollar Ridge Fire in Duchesne and Wasatch counties, is already going home.
“We’ve been out here for about five days on this one,” he said while packing his bags on top of the team's Great Basin Fire truck.
It’s not that the fire is 100 percent out. The Dollar Ridge Fire is still 93 percent contained.
Cline just feels he has to leave.
“It’s so hard to focus out here. I’ve been thinking about going home ever since it happened, ever since Sunday,” said Cline.
That’s because this past Sunday, the main girl in his life went missing.
“My dog is my entire world. I’m out here for my dog, so I can afford a place for her and I,” said Cline.
Maja is only a year and a half old.
Still, she somehow disappeared from the backyard of the Taylorsville house Cline shares with his father, near 6200 South and 4000 West.
“I’m not sure whether she got out or if somebody purposely came to knock some boards out to kind of take her out and wait for a reward or something like that, you know? I mean, it’s just horrible, though, either way,” said Cline.
His father has checked shelters for her and put up missing posters.
Cline even posted his missing dog on social media.
Still, though, two days later, nothing.
Cline says some Duchesne residents have also volunteered to drive to Taylorsville to put up missing dog posters as a way to say thank you to him for fighting the fire.
“The community out here has been awesome. I couldn’t ask for better people,” said Cline. “But it’s been hard. No sign of her anywhere.”
Since the Dollar Ridge Fire is nearly out, fire managers decided they could let Cline go home to take care of the only thing burning in his mind.
“That dog has saved my life personally more times than I can count,” he said while still packing his bags to leave fire camp at the Duchesne County Fairgrounds and head home. “She’s my life. Means everything to me to have that dog back.”
