Michael A. Sawyers, Cumberland Times-News
December 24, 2009
FROSTBURG — For the Dolchan family, Christmas came early, on Dec. 22, when their blind, 14-year-old Jack Russell terrier, Boomer, was returned to them after spending five nights on Big Savage Mountain, surviving one of the worst snow storms in anybody’s memory.
Fourteen-year-old Boomer, a Jack Russell terrier, is pictured with his family, Tyler, Liam, Katie, Bill, and Madison Dolchan Wednesday evening after he was found after being lost during last weekend’s snowstorm. The dog is blind.
“We let him out to pee like we always do,” said Katie Dolchan. “It was 5:15 p.m. Dec. 17.”
Katie’s husband, Bill, said Boomer’s routine is to do his business, return to the garage and bark, whereupon the door to warmth and love is opened and Boomer re-enters for pets from the Dolchan kids, Tyler, Madison and Liam.
This time there was no barking. This time there was no Boomer. Bill readily admits that this time there was panic.
“Tyler and I started looking and couldn’t find a trace of him. For three hours we searched, driving around using a spotlight. I’m sure people thought we were trying to spotlight deer.”
Katie, who was summoned from one of her children’s activities, figured a coyote had gotten the Jack Russell. “We could hear coyotes on the mountain as we searched,” she said.
As the days wore on, Katie said Liam, 4, would say his regular prayers at night and then add “Please, God, watch over my lost doggie, Boomer.” A prayer request went forth from Emmanuel United Methodist Church, the Dolchan’s house of worship on Pocahontas Road. The prayer was realistic, according to Katie, asking anybody who had knowledge of Boomer, either dead or alive, to contact the family.
Bill said he figured that Boomer, with the family since puppyhood, was a goner.
“A lot of people have told me that old dogs wander away to die,” Bill said. “And maybe they are right, but I didn’t want that for Boomer. I want him to die in my arms when the time comes, not out on a cold mountain.”
That option remains open.
When Santa arrived at the Dolchan residence on Frostburg Road on Tuesday, it wasn’t Kris Kringle in a sled but Donnie Shingler in his pickup truck.
“They sure were happy to get their dog back,” Shingler said later in an understatement that vies for world-record status.
On Tuesday, Shingler was using his muzzleloader to hunt deer about three-quarters of a mile and uphill from the Dolchan residence.
“It’s a place I’ve hunted all my life,” said the Eckhart resident. “It was about 4 p.m. and I hadn’t even seen any tracks so I was walking out when I looked off to the side and saw something stick its head up out of the snow.”
That something was Boomer.
Shingler said he walked 25 feet through the deep snow and could see that Boomer had been in that one spot throughout the major weekend snowstorm. “He moved a little when I got to him, but it was easy to pick him up.
Shortly thereafter, Boomer was in Shingler’s pickup truck and was eating a deer bologna sandwich. “He wolfed it down,” Shingler said. Shingler, by the way, has a Jack Russell terrier of his own, a 6-year-old male named Hubble.
Shingler took Boomer to Eckhart and called his friend Dan Cutter.
Voila. Cutter happened to be a member of Emmanuel United Methodist Church and had heard the prayer request for a lost and blind family pet.
Bill Dolchan remembers his drive home Tuesday. “When I got to our driveway Tyler was running toward me carrying Boomer’s blanket and he told me Boomer was on the way home,” Bill said.
Boomer is home now. He has a little frostbite injury on his nose. He has even been allowed up on the couch, a former no-no. And, so much for privacy, he never gets to pee alone.
Source: http://www.times-news.com/local/local_story_358140156.html
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