Marc works almost directly across the street from the dog day care, at a garden center. The day care center started calling his cell immediately, although as it turned out, the calls/voicemails didn’t hit his phone until that night. In retrospect, the day care center people should have run across the street to tell him. Other than that oversight, their response to the crisis of having a dog escape while on their watch – from committing resources to the search to making an array of improvements to prevent a fluke like that from occurring again.
So, Zoe was off! Her mom was notified, and she immediately made fliers and left work to go start putting them up. One place they went was the garden center where Marc works, and the flier was seen by a woman that knows about our loosely operating group of lost dog recovery volunteers. So she called me; this was one day after Zoe had escaped, and Katie and Marc were out fliering.
When Zoe's case was presented to us, we had been discussing taking on a different kind of case -- that of a dog that had been seen wandering at large, and was reported so on Craigslist. We don't normally try to find the owner of a wandering dogs; we work in the opposite direction, working to find lost dog's for an owner or rescue organization. After finding out the details of Zoe's case, we realized that the wandering dog reported on Craigslist WAS Zoe.
Zoe went missing on a Monday at mid-day, and the two sightings that came in occurred put her in the same spot as each other, a few blocks away and across a very busy road, 7 and 14 hours after her escape. No more sightings Tuesday or Wednesday. But then Thursday morning, one of Marc’s co-workers at the garden center was coming out of one of their assorted buildings on their grounds, and clearly saw Zoe, across the way, but within the garden center, outside. He called her name and she did look over. But with each step towards her that Dave took, Zoe took a step back. So he stopped taking steps towards her, and grabbed his radio. Fortunately all the employees at the garden center use radios, so in a minute, most of the employees were dispatched to assist with capturing Zoe.
You've heard of a Code Adam, right? It's when a child turns up missing in a store, all the doors are locked so that no one, customers included, can leave until the place is searched. Well, this was like a Code Zoe -- when an at large dog turns up on a store's grounds, all the exits are blocked (to the best of the employees' ability) so that the dog can't escape.
Zoe resisted, to be sure. Marc showed me on a map all of the moves she made around the property, trying to get away from employees, some of which were chasing her. After a few minutes, she reached a point at which, had she gone straight, she’d have exited the property, and could have gotten away completely, though she would likely have run right into traffic. But at the last second, she chose to turn left, and in doing so, she was cornered and surrounded by employees! Her response to that? She submitted immediately, laying down belly side up!
Turns out her foot was broken, never mind that she was running around, so employees put her in a wheel barrow, and wrapped her in a sleeping bag until Marc got there.
So Zoe, who is an Australian Cattle Dog mix, stayed very close to the area where she escaped from, which was a place she’s been going 3-4 times a week for much of the three months she’s been with Marc and Katie. And this was very close to Marc’s workplace, where as it turns out, she’s been numerous times. (Katie also takes a subway, almost daily, not far from there.) So, leaving food out at the garden center was a smart tip that Marc’s co-workers had suggested from the start.
Zoe’s blog is located at: http://findzoe.blogspot.com
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