By Bob Shaw, pioneerpress.com
Updated: 03/06/2010 10:38:05 AM CST
The dog ran away in July, and somehow survived a bitter winter — until he was joyfully reunited with his owner Wednesday.
"I am so happy," gushed 21-year-old Kristin Glanz, as she took the dog to a veterinarian for a checkup Friday.
Max seems to be OK, except for a case of Lyme disease. For a confirmed house-dog who hated being outdoors, his survival is almost miraculous.
"When I finally picked him up, I just started bawling," Glanz said. "We sat for half an hour in the car, just hugging and kissing."
The saga of the Dog Who Wouldn't Die began with a family vacation. In late July, Kristin's family left Woodbury for northern Minnesota. They dropped Max off at a friend's house in River Falls, Wis., where Glanz attends college.
As soon as Glanz left, Max wriggled through the railings on a deck and disappeared. For the next month, Glanz and her friends posted notices and patrolled the neighborhood.
"We kept getting calls — here he is! Here he is!" said Glanz's mother, Julie.
"We searched for him all day and night," Kristin said. The panicked responses involved at least one 4 a.m. drive to River Falls. They tried setting a live trap.
"But he was too smart," Glanz said.
She came heartbreakingly close to saving him one night in October. After dashing to River Falls, she saw Max sitting on a street corner. She called to him, but the dog was too frightened. Glanz couldn't get near him.
"I remember I was sick that night, and my voice might have sounded hoarse to him," she said.
As the weeks dragged on, the calls started to feel like Elvis sightings. Kristin started thinking the unthinkable — that Max might be dead.
"She wanted closure, if nothing else," Julie Glanz said.
But the calls kept coming. In December, a woman called — but there was no telling if the dog in her yard was Max.
In January, another woman called, saying she'd been feeding a little dog in her yard. She even set out a kennel with blankets for him. Glanz responded — and failed again.
Then, on Wednesday, someone called to tell her about a notice on a River Falls food-store bulletin board. "It said, 'I am feeding this dog, but I can't catch him,' " Glanz said.
She drove to the address, about a mile from where Max had initially disappeared. She spotted her dog, watching her warily from the side of a house, then saw him run away.
Max circled back 15 minutes later and stopped and stared at her, keeping his distance.
He ran off again. Glanz got into her car, slowly went down the street — and watched in horror as Max was nearly hit by a passing car.
"I got out, yelling. He was freaked out," Glanz said. The dog was walking in circles, confused. Finally, he approached her, slinking — the dog-posture of surrender.
"He was whimpering. He knew who I was," Glanz said. "He smelled horrible. He reeked."
She took the stinky dog for an overnight visit to the At Home Animal Clinic in Stillwater.
There, veterinarians speculated how a pampered house-dog like Max could have rediscovered his inner wolf, like Buck in "The Call of the Wild."
Dr. Christina Shivers said even a short-haired dog like Max grows a warm undercoat of fur in the winter. Max might have found burrows to hide in during the 20-below nights.
He could have found mice, rabbits and squirrels to eat. But the dog stayed in one area for eight months, she said — a hint that he might have found a steady supply of food from neighborhood dog lovers.
The biggest surprise, said Shivers, was that Max was not killed by a car.
Shivers wasn't worried about rabies, because it is mainly transmitted by foxes — which a dog like Max would avoid. Max had no intestinal parasites.
He did, however, have Lyme disease. He will get treatments — along with an entirely new level of pampering and love.
"This has been," Julie Glanz said, "quite the adventure."
Source: http://www.twincities.com/ci_14522303?source=most_viewed&nclick_check=1
No comments:
Post a Comment