The dog found Garver, who was hiding under debris in the woods, signaling the officers.
"I was afraid this was going to go sideways. I'm glad it didn't," said spokesman Mark Gregory of the Spokane sheriff's office.
Gregory said yesterday morning that the two human officers did their job Friday night, but Gunnar was the key to capturing Anthony Garver without injury to any of the humans.
Garver is being held in the Spokane jail under a US marshal warrant. He was treated for dehydration after his capture, the sheriff's office said.
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Jeremy Barclay, a spokesman for the Washington Department of Corrections, said his agency will continue to work with the Department of Social and Health Services on the case, even though Garver was under a civil commitment and had finished serving his incarceration period.
"We're not sure of the next steps yet," Barclay said.
Garver, 28, who is accused of torturing a woman to death, escaped from the psychiatric hospital on Wednesday night. He crawled out a window of a locked, lower-security unit with another patient, Mark Alexander Adams, 58, who was caught the next day.
Garver, who bought a bus ticket from Seattle to Spokane after he escaped, had last been seen on Thursday in the Spokane area where his parents live after his father called authorities to report his son had stopped by briefly.