Reality Check

I have been feeling very discouraged with no sightings on the couple of nice days when I expected both Toby to be out of his hiding place looking for food and people out to see him. And then the cold, snowy, and icy weather make me feel worse knowing he is out in it somewhere. I hope he has somewhere warm and I noticed that none of the other animals I usually see when out looking for Toby were out either - foxes, cats, crows, hawks, and squirrels.

Here is a story from Sam of Pure Gold Pet Trackers who has plenty of experience and success at searching for and finding lost pets.

I just wanted to share with you all a story of a dog we have been working on for over a year. She was a skittery little 14 inch tall sheltie. The breeder placed her in a pet home after she did her showing and had her 2 litters. The breeder did a followup call to get some DNA for a study, almost a year later, and was told that the dog had run away 9 months before. The new owners thought there was something wrong with the dog for it to run away from them. They had already adopted another dog and stopped looking for Aspen.

The breeder called me and asked if there was anything we could do after so much time. It was a small town that she was lost in so I made up posters just like I did with Toby and told her to put them up at every intersection in town starting with the ones near where she was last seen 9 months before. She started getting calls right away from that same area. Lots of calls saying, "Oh that's the 'wild sheltie' that hangs out near the golf course." and " We see her all of the time on 164 when we're going to the casino." and "That dog has been killing my chickens!"

So we didn't have to track her because we knew exactly where she was. The challenge was to figure out where her den was and where would be the best place to trap her. (just like Toby)

There were two abandoned houses near the house with the chickens and I told her to set up a feeding station at each to see where she would eat. Unfortunately, she disagreed with me that the best place would be the big house with the multiple outbuildings and the large parking lot next door where we could park at a distance and observe the trap. Instead she set the feeding station behind a the small house where the only place we could park was 30 feet away in the driveway. Its hard to be discreet at that distance with a dog that is highly suspicious of strange vehicles, people, smells, etc. We set up a camera and had pictures of her eating inside the trap two days before so we set up the trap. We waited for 10 hours and she never showed up all night.

So I told her we should move the feeding station up to the other house. She said it was too close to a guy that feeds feral cats and wild animals who said that he could catch anything and would get the dog for her. Then after several attempts he commented that we will never catch that dog alive because she is completely feral. However, he continued looking for her when he was out filling his cat feeding stations. Turns out, he was feeding ferals at the abandoned house where I had wanted to move our station but he neglected to mentioned it to us. Anyway, two days ago he was on his morning rounds and happened to see her snoozing in the corner of one of the outbuildings that I had suspected all along. He called the breeder and she drove up as fast as she could but didn't think she would still be there an hour and a half later. But, she was there and they managed to corner her in the storage container where she was sleeping.

By the time the dog got into the car the 'domestic/wild' switch had clicked back and she was acting like she had never been loose at all. When she was taken out at home to potty, she jumped up on the breeder/owner for attention. Inside the house she was playing with the other dogs, acting completely normal right down to remembering which crate was hers and responding to the sound of the cookie jar by running into her crate and sitting just like all of the other dogs. (it had been 2 1/2 years since she had been in that home).

The key to getting this little dog back to safety was persistence, posters, and patience. Without the observation of the volunteer and his willingness to stay and observe without rushing in until Katrina arrived to help, this dog would have escaped again and would still be out in the cold. As volunteers you need to talk to everyone, ask when, where, what was he doing, and how did he look when you find someone who has seen him. This information is used to track his movements and habits which will eventually give us the best location to trap him.

Until we have more sightings and can get him to eat in one place on a regular schedule there is no point in doing anything other than what you have been doing. Because he has stayed in the same general place for weeks, like the sheltie, there is no reason to believe that he will leave the area (without assistance). We just need to keep our eyes open and document any and all information that we get about Toby.

Because there was only one person onsite helping the sheltie owner with her search it took much longer than it should have. Hopefully, it won't take us almost 2 years to catch this little guy.