Dogs Lost and Found

Ella

The last few weeks were busy “dog weeks” for Lost Pet Recovery (LPR), and our household.  My wife Jenn was completely immersed in finding a nearby dog for two weeks, working to get a lost Great Dane back to her home in Kirkersville.  Ella was a new arrival there, and got out on her second day.  

She “disappeared”, but really didn’t go very far.  Thanks to the dozens of signs put out on the roads, “Lost Dog – Great Dane – DO NOT CHASE call (Jenn’s number)”, we knew she was still hanging around the small village.  And Jenn was just behind her, putting up cameras and leaving “bait”:  dog food, Vienna sausages, chicken broth, the occasional McDonald’s burger; and hoping to spot her on a trail cam.  The idea:  get her to come back to eat, then “drop” a trap (a really big trap for a Great Dane) and get her safe.

Corn Maize

The calls kept coming in for a week, but Ella never found the bait, and was never on camera.  There was no place to put a trap, because there no place where Ella stayed.  Then, as we drove to a birthday party for a friend on Sunday, the phone rang.  Ella was in the “corn maize” at Van Buren Acres, a pumpkin place right beside I-70.  Four LPR members converged in the pouring rain at the maize, and wandered the paths looking for a glimpse of the 150 pound gray Dane.  You haven’t experienced farm life if you haven’t been in a corn maize in a downpour. But Ella was already gone.

So more signs went up, and Jenn talked to the entire neighborhood on the access road by the Interstate and the farmer who owned the surrounding cornfields.  Trail cameras were posted, but it really was more sightings from the neighborhood that let us know that Ella was still hanging around.

Jenn and I were searching a cornfield on Thursday when the call came in – Ella is in the backyard heading west!!  We raced to get ahead of her to put down a trap, but we arrived just in time for Ella to look in the window of the home, and turn back into the corn.  We didn’t get her.  But finally, one pile of food disappeared, just outside of an isolated hay barn.  Jenn was adding more food and setting up a camera there when Ella emerged from behind the barn, sniffed the air, then sauntered off into the corn.  Jenn “dropped” a trap.  

Go Bucks!

It was a sleepless night, waiting for the phone alarm to go off – something moving at the trap.  But it wasn’t until the next morning that Ella was caught on camera, stretching into the trap and getting the food – but missing the trigger to set if off.  Ella ate, then wandered away.

Jenn reset the bait, this time with sausage biscuits, and carefully checked the trap. After the sleepless night before, she went to bed early.  Ella, a true “Buckeye”, must have been aware of the Ohio State football schedule.  She waited until just after the Penn State game was over, then went back into the trap for more food.  This time the gate slammed shut. 

 We raced the twenty minutes  to the trap and got there about 12:30 am.  Other members of the LPR team joined us, and we lifted Ella, trap and all, into the back of our pickup truck. We drove her to her “Grandma’s” garage.  At first, she was “shaking” scared, but as she came out of the trap in the garage, she relaxed, leaned on Jenn’s leg, and turned into the sweetest girl.  She gave Jenn a lick as we said goodbye.

That’s the high of finding lost dogs. 

Pearl 

But there are lows as well.  Pearl was a beautiful Golden Retriever who was rescued from a breeder.  She was never socialized to people, just kept in a cage to make puppies.  The Rescue had her checked out by the vet, then sent to a family in Dublin, Ohio.  Pearl was there nine days, when  she slipped out the door – and she was off.

Pearl was gone for weeks in the hot July sun.  But she didn’t go too far.  She stayed along a creek in a neighborhood park, hiding in the tall grasses.  LPR got involved and set up a feeding station, that Pearl, and all the raccoons in the neighborhood, were happy to use.  But when LPR put out a trap, Pearl wouldn’t even get near it.  She had spent much of her life in cage – no amount of food would get past the fear of the trap.

Bigger Traps

So if you can’t get a dog in a trap, and there’s no way to lure her, then what other alternatives are there?  There’s a bigger trap, really more like a kennel cage, called a panel trap.  So we started with one panel near the food.  The change threw Pearl off for a while, but she finally started eating again.  We added a second and a third panel, and in time Pearl would stretch into the area to get food. But she always ready to jump back and get away.   We hoped that we could complete the panel, and eventually close the door to rescue Pearl.

We hauled bags of food a couple hundred yards through the brush, three times a week.  Pearl would always show up on camera, nervously eating what was available.  Sometimes she was by herself, but often the raccoons and possums joined in the repast.  One afternoon, Jenn and I were bringing in the food, when Pearl and some deer emerged from the grass and ran off. 

We hoped we hadn’t scared her too badly, but we were glad she found companionship with the deer.  

This went from July through August and into September.  The park maintenance workers cut the tall grass, changing the environment, but Pearl eventually  returned to the food.  The nearby High School came into session, and on football game nights (and their home cross country meet) Pearl would disappear for a while, but she soon came back.

We were slowly conditioning Pearl to the panel-trap, and to a “schedule” of coming back for more food.  She was finally becoming “predictable”. 

Chased Away

Then one day, there was a human figure with a leash on camera.  Pearl was gone.  When we went back with more food, we found a tennis ball right beside the panels.  Perhaps “the figure” decided he could catch Pearl, maybe hoping he could entice her to “play ball”.  We don’t know what happened, but we are pretty sure she wouldn’t know what the tennis ball was for.  

Pearl ran off, far down the creek.  We had one more sighting, this time about a mile away down Indian Creek in Dublin.  Then Pearl was gone.  That was on October 1st.  We continued to leave food for her, sausage biscuits, her favorite, until it was clear that she moved on.  Then LPR put up more signs around Dublin, hoping for a sighting so we could get back to feeding her again.

High and Low

On November 1st,  Pearl’s body was found along railroad tracks in Marion County, about twenty-six miles away from where we last saw her.  We don’t know exactly how she got there, the creek meanders down to the Scioto River, and there are railroad tracks near where the Scioto flows across the Delaware/Marion County border.   She was a beautiful, fearful, dog, that that we were unable to save.  From the high of Ella on Sunday, we had the low of Pearl on Monday.  

There are other dogs out there.  LPR has been involved in over two hundred rescues just this year.  Sometimes we get the dog right away.  Sometimes we advise the owners how to find their own lost dogs. Then there are the projects, the “Ella’s” where we have to out-think and get lucky to bring a dog home.  But the Pearl’s stick with us, more than the successes.    It’s hard to get past that beautiful, scared, dog, running with the deer in Dublin.  

But there’s always another dog missing – time to go back to work.

Lost Pet Recovery is a non-profit organization.  We don’t charge for any of our efforts, and no one gets paid.  But these efforts do cost money – equipment, bait, cameras, gas, and more.  If you’d like to support our efforts, you can donate through Facebook, through PayPal at info@lostpetrecovery.org, or you can use the old fashioned way – a check to Lost Pet Recovery, PO Box 16383, Columbus, OH, 43216.

The Sunday Series

Author: Marty Dahlman

I'm Marty Dahlman. After forty years of teaching and coaching track and cross country, I've finally retired!!! I've also spent a lot of time in politics, working campaigns from local school elections to Presidential campaigns.