By Benjamin R Freed
December 26, 2012
A Germantown, Md. couple got a very nice Christmas Day surprise when workers at Dulles International Airport recovered a dog the couple had brought over from Egypt but ran off as soon as he arrived two weeks ago.
The dog, a German shepherd-Labrador mix named Ralph, was brought over from the streets of Egypt (eat your heart out, Tom Friedman) on December 12. But while his new owner, David Scott was loading Ralph into the car for the ride to his new home, the dog got loose and bolted across the Dulles parking lots.
Scott told NBC4 that his wife first encountered Ralph while visiting friends in Egypt who had been caring for the pooch, but because that family could not care for the Ralph, the Scotts went about trying to adopt him. It took six months of paperwork and waiting for a chaperone before Ralph could be flown to the United States.
But the dog survived his two weeks in the Northern Virginia wilderness, and was found yesterday morning back at the airport thanks to a trap set by Dulles employees. "REUNITED! DULLES RESCUE DOG FOUND TODAY!" blared a posting on a Facebook page that tracks lost dogs in the D.C. area.
The Scotts were reunited with Ralph some time yesterday, according to the posting. The trap used to capture the wayward dog was described as "humane."
UPDATE, 1 p.m.: Kimberly Gibbs, a spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority, says it was airport police who found Ralph on Christmas morning.
Officers conducted a brief search the day the dog went missing, but there was no ongoing coordinated effort to find Ralph . The dog was found without any identifying tags, but was reconnected with its owners after matching a description.
But just how did Ralph survive on Dulles' 12,000-acre campus? Scott obtained a trap from a local humane society, left it in the parking lot and routinely filled it with food, as he would check back occasionally and find that Ralph—or possibly some other animal—had eaten it without being captured. On Tuesday morning, though, Dulles police officers positioned a dish of dog food in a position that could trigger the trap, and Ralph was caught in about an hour, Gibbs says.
"Very smart dog," she adds
Source: http://dcist.com/2012/12/md_couple_reunited_with_dog_adopted.php
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