By Jennifer Sprague, Press staff
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 11:29 PM EDT
MIDDLETOWN — After nearly seven months on the run, and after surviving a frigid winter, Lady the missing hound has been found.
Lady, captured over Memorial Day weekend, is a one and a half to two-year-old dog that ran away from her adoptive owners last November after having been with them for only a few hours. Since then, residents have been aiding Middletown Animal Control Officer Gail Petras in capturing her.
Lady ran away from her owners just hours after they adopted her from the Connecticut Humane Society last November. After she managed to evade capture several times, the hound surrendered over Memorial Day weekend.
Middletown Animal Control Officer Gail Petras has been trying to catch the skittish pooch since she ran away from her new owners with her leash still attached during a walk near Indian Hill Cemetery.
During her seven-month trek around the city, Lady was spotted around the Wesleyan campus before reportedly heading to the Bretton Road area. She was spotted near the Elks Lodge on Maynard Street and near Connecticut Valley Hospital, dragging her bright pink leash for months.
“She obviously has very good survival instincts to last through the frigid winter,” Petras said. “It’s rare we have a dog like this that’s out for so long.”
Petras said three or four weeks would pass between sightings of the runaway hound, but she would always turn up. There were times they thought she had died, but she managed to get by without frostbite or significant weight loss.
At one point, she wandered into a fenced backyard and Petras thought they had caught her, but she found a hole under the fence and dug her way out. She returned to the same yard, where the hole had been filled in, but when the owner closed her in the yard, she jumped the four-foot fence.
In early March, the night before a bad snowstorm, Lady popped up in Ruth and Cliff Drechsler-Martells’ doghouse on Ridge Road.
Ruth Drechsler-Martell left food for Lady twice a day for nearly three months. Lady came and ate, never letting anyone close to her. Drechsler-Martell even tried leaving a trail of cookies to lure Lady closer to the house.
“We couldn’t get near her,” Drechsler-Martell said. “She would run away.”
Then, over Memorial Day weekend, Lady waltzed through the open door of a house near the Higganum line on Saybrook Road, and curled up on the living room floor. The homeowners were having a barbecue and assumed one of their guests brought the dog, but after all their guests had departed, Lady was still there. The hound was still wearing her tags from the Humane Society, so her rightful owners were contacted.
Shocked to find their dog was still alive, the owners told Petras they couldn’t keep Lady.
“She was missing for seven months,” Petras said. “The owners went out and got a new dog. They can only have one dog in the apartment. They really only owned her for about four hours.”
The Drechsler-Martells are considering adopting Lady, but they first need to see how their 9-year-old dog, used to ruling the roost, reacts to the approximately 2-year-old hound mix. Plus, there is always the possibility that she will take another road trip, Drechsler-Martell said.
Sitting on the floor at the dog pound Wednesday, Lady let Drechsler-Martell, Petras and Cromwell Animal Control Officer Cheryl Gagon pet her and feed her treats, but she was shy and calm. She is not aggressive, and Petras does not believe she was abused.
“Her instinct is to run away if she is scared,” Petras said. “She doesn’t act like she was abused.
I think she was just under-socialized.”
Petras said Lady loves other dogs; she is spayed and she has all of her shots.
Source: http://www.middletownpress.com/articles/2009/06/03/news/doc4a273e995236e228585703.txt
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