That's the message from this blog update!
It's one of the first messages I try to give to people looking for their lost dogs when I have only time for a few messages. And believe me, it's hard to fit it in because there are really quite a number of items that make up the list of the first things to coach a lost dog owner/guardian about.
There are so many anecdotes and illustrations that breathe life into the "ask for help" statement. I will focus on just one, which you can read and/or watch for yourself. It's the story of Domino, a rat terrier in whose home is in Phoenix and who went missing in California
When Kim and Jason, Domino's mom and dad, vacationed for a week in San Diego, Domino naturally joined them. It was a family vacation, after all. While on a walk with one of the friends, Domino got away. Long story short, Kim and Jason ended up having to leave and return to Phoenix after several days, without Domino.
For several weeks, Kim searched online, and did everything she could think of using the internet. In an online posting, she saw that someone spotted a small terrier type dog, and though it was quite a distance from where Domino went missing, Kim knew enough to at least check it out. She contacted the poster, a woman named Vicki. It didn't take long to establish that the dog Vicki saw was not Domino. But during the time that the conversation took place, and perhaps in part being drawn out by Vicki's warm personality, Kim opened up to Vicki and shared her grief and desperation for help.
After a couple of days, Vicki realized that she was compelled to help. With posters in hand and friends expressing draw dropping disbelief at what she was doing, she set out on the hour-and-a-half drive from Laguna Beach to San Diego to put up posters. Vicki had never done anything like this.
While putting up just the second poster, she was approached by someone certain that this was the dog she had been seeing for a few weeks. So, Vicki found Domino in record time! But all her attempts to get her to come to her failed -- so much that she called Kim to come and get Domino herself. Kim tore out of her house, with no airline ticket, and caught the first flight she could get to San Diego, where Vicki picked her up. And Domino needed only to hear Kim's voice to come running!
It's a wonderful, wonderful story. and you can watch the long and/or the short version of the story told by Vicki, and read the story as told in the Orange County Register.
If you are one who helps people find their lost dogs, you may not always have the time to tell this story. And frantic lost dog owners don't have time to watch or read it as they worry for the safety of their pets, and miss them so terribly.
But if this story helps to impress on you the importance of encouraging people to ask for help, or at least allowing them to do so when they offer (and I watch people refuse help all the time), then I've done what I wanted to do.
