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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Survival of the Fittest

I believe that one of the reasons that many dogs spend time in shelters is because, for a myriad of reasons, their owners or guardians give up the search for them. Some such dogs end their lives in shelters, some go on to be adopted, and possibly leaving other truly homeless dogs unadopted. But all dogs in shelters, even for short periods of time, require resources that have to come from somewhere, and be paid for. So, keeping lost dogs out of shelters is a good reason to learn how to recover lost dogs.

Of the many reasons that owners give up the search, one of the saddest for me is that they decide that their dog isn’t going to survive on its own long enough to be found, and captured. Between elements, wildlife and cars, many people begin to experience doubts very quickly if their pet has never spent much time on its own. It can be very difficult convincing someone not to give up a search after a couple of days.

Toby’s story of survival is one that is quick to tell, but it’s powerful. Little Toby materialized after almost four weeks on the lam.

He is a shih tsu, weighing nearly 15 pounds when he ran off, fearful of many things. He had been adopted into a new home the day after Christmas, after having spent a few months in a foster home after his rescue organization had received him from a backyard breeder. Not much is known about him, but he most likely was given few opportunities for socialization, and wasn’t taught to be confident in himself and his abilities. However, there’s no indication that he had had ever had to fend for himself.

Toby backed out of his harness three days after he arrived in his new home, on December 29th.

Over the next four weeks, there were a few sightings, and a lot of effort on the part of many volunteers who came together to search for him, make sure that feeding stations were monitored, and fliers were hung.

Just a half a mile from where most of the sightings were, on recovery day (January 24th), he was seen by a family that owns chickens. This little dog that was later, after his capture, found to be emaciated, severely dehydrated, covered in burrs, have lost about a third of his body weight, and who started out as skittish dog lacking in confidence, had killed one of their chickens!

Now who really knows if this kill was intended by Toby so he could consume the chicken, or if perhaps he was trying to eat the chicken feed and ended up needing to defend himself against the chicken. It doesn’t matter; it’s still a story that surprises people. Most people don't expect a tiny and weak little dog who had never lived on his own to be able to take down a chicken, whether in defense or for consumption.


Toby at home after his ordeal. He doesn't really make you think "survivor", does he? But he is!!

Hopefully the story can be used to convince lost dog owners in the future that their dog’s likely have more survival skills and instincts than they realize, and to keep up the search for their beloved missing pets.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Bonded Person as Lure

After my last update, I will offer a contradictory lesson, since I’ve learned both lessons. Both are important.

I had briefly discussed a scientific explanation of why a dog that has been out on its own for a while, eating a bad diet, will fail, at lealst initially, to recognize its owner when seen, heard and even smelled.

It remains true, that in many cases, a dog will show no signs of recognition when first reunited with a person or people with whom he was bonded before disappearing. But on the other hand, and in other cases, the dog’s bonded owner, or anyone that had been close to the dog before it went missing, may still be the best lure there is.

When Vixen went missing, we were told all about her many fears. There was almost nothing and no one that she was not afraid of. After a few days of fliers, large signs, and other outreach to the community about Vixen and her plight, we started to receive sighting calls from people that were seeing her. This gave us our first ideas about where to start putting feeding stations, which we would want to swap out for a humane trap. Pretty soon, we realized that we had a problem since the chance that she would approach even a feeding station was looking really remote.

But protocol was to contact the people that she had stayed with before she was adopted – two days before she went missing, by the way. Prior to that, she had spent several months in a dog day care facility, after having been rescued from a bad situation. Several of the employees had become familiar to her, so they were to be called if a live sighting was to come in.

And such a sighting call did come in, and they were called. After all that build-up, Vixen pretty much went right to the person within minutes of her arrival.

So, the successful lure here wasn’t food, which we always think of first when considering possible lures. It was a familiar and trusted person.

I could point to any number of stories that ended similar to Vixen’s story, with family members serving, in effect, as the lure. Luna’ story is another one that I will tell.

When we were working together to try to round up a stray beagle that had taken up residence in a neighborhood, we posted a picture from our wildlife camera, once we captured the first few, to Craigslist. We were looking for the owner, and within a day, a woman came forward after comparing our picture to those of her family’s beagle that had disappeared four weeks earlier, from their home 22 miles away. The woman came out with her small children and her mother. Once she emerged from the woods, it did take the dog a few minutes to focus, or to catch a whiff of their scent, or do whatever it took to recognize the family. When she did, she went running to them. I’d love to have seen it, as I’m sure it was a beautiful scene.

The advice, then, for the pet detective, is to caution the dog’s owner that the dog may not recognize the person, but then also, to include people that the dog was bonded to among the responders for live sighting calls.