Dog Comes Out of Hiding to Play

For several years, Ann O’Malley would spend hours at a time sifting through internet posts of lost dogs and found dogs trying to find a match. She had volunteered at her local shelter during Katrina, and when she saw how distressed the dogs and cats in the shelter were, she tried to think what she could do to make a difference.

One day after three years, she succeeded! Her local paper printed a human interest story about her after she helped an Arkansas family reunite with their dog they had lost while in Texas. And a woman we’ll call Mary clipped and held on to the article, possibly figuring that if her little dog were ever lost, Ann might be someone that could help her.

Meanwhile, Mary’s elderly aunt spent years foregoing vacations because she didn’t trust anyone to take care of her small and very skittish dog. When she finally did either need to or decide to go away somewhere, she left the dog in the care of Mary and her husband.

Everything had been going just fine, and the aunt's dog was getting along very well with the couple’s little dog. Around 11pm one evening, they took the dogs outside on a last pee call when one minute he was there, in the yard with their dog, and the next minute he was gone. The area was heavily wooded, surrounded by high prairie grasses, teeming with predators (this was in Arkansas). Though terrified of the possibilities they were facing, they went to bed, and were up early, putting up the posters they'd printed. But there was no sign of the dog.

Remembering the article she’d read about Ann O’Malley, Mary called her, crying and asking for help. This was completely outside of Ann’s experience as she’d never lost a dog or looked for a lost dog any way other than by trying to match internet lost dog and found dog postings. But she figured she’d throw out a suggestion that popped into her head.

Ann asked Mary if the aunt's dog liked their own dog; did they play together? Yes, they really liked each other. So Ann asked her if, when they went out searching for the dog, they brought their own dog along, on a leash. The answer was that no, they wanted their hands free so that in case they saw him, they could grab him. So Ann’s off-the-top-of-her-head suggestion was that if the missing dog saw that his buddy thought that these people were okay, he might come out from wherever he is. Mary said they would give it a try, and Ann agreed to come out and help them search.

She started getting ready to go, and not more than about 15 minutes later, Mary called back. Sure enough, just as Ann had said it might happen, the aunt's dog came right out of the grass to them when they walked their dog on a leash.

This might not work so well had it not been the very next day after the dog went missing. Had the dog experience any real time "in the wild", it might have taken more than a little invitation to play. But in the end, the dog was found, apparently by bringing a companion along to draw him out of hiding.