Keinai, black lab

Happy reunion: Dog limps home after going missing for more than a month
By Joseph Robertia | Peninsula Clarion
Sunday, April 04, 2010

The bond between humans and their pets is strong one, as proven by a locally-known dog named Kenai. Gone missing more than a month, he'd lost a third of his body weight and part of one paw during his lonely attempt to hobble home.

"He was skin and bones, and very, very dehydrated," said his owner, Colin Lowe of Cooper Landing, when he first got his dog back late last month.

Colin Lowe of Cooper Landing, poses with his black Labrador named Kenai, who was missing for more than 30 days after disappearing near the Russian River Ferry area, but recently found his way home. The dog had a severely injured paw when found.

The dog first went missing on Feb. 20, while hiking with Lowe and his family in the Russian River area, near Cooper Landing.

"We were walking around the ferry area when Kenai took off," Lowe said, referring to his 6-year old black Labrador -- a hefty 110-pound male.

"It wasn't that unusual at first," Lowe added. "He usually explores a little, then comes back, but this day he didn't come back."

Lowe and his family became worried, as minutes turned into hours, and eventually hours turned into days and weeks.

"We went back daily," he said. "We would call and search for him. We even made a search grid of the old camping area. We were very broken up about the whole thing."

Lowe and his family pursued all the usual channels for attempting to find a lost dog. He posted the dog on several Web sites and radio programs for lost pets, and regularly called animal shelters in Kenai, Soldotna, Anchorage and Wasilla.

"We even called the UPS driver in this area to keep an eye out for him," Lowe said.

Finally, after 35 days missing, the Lowe's phone rang. On the other end was Anchorage resident Robert Heavlin, who was calling to say he had picked up a skinny dog along the Sterling Highway on his drive home from Soldotna.

"He called the number on Kenai's tag," Lowe said. "He had picked him up about 3/4 of a mile from the ferry, after seeing him limping down the road."

Lowe and his family immediately drove to meet Heavlin and reunite with Kenai.

"We were ecstatic. My wife was in tears," he said.

But when the family got there, they barely recognized Kenai as the same animal they knew a month earlier.

"I'm not sure how much longer he would have made it," Lowe said.

They quickly rushed Kenai to a veterinarian, where it was determined the dog had lost 45 pounds. But more critically, the dog had lost several toes and roughly half of his left paw.

"There's no way it's frostbite or from another animal's bite," Lowe said.

As an experienced woodsman and the owner of the Kenai Cache Outfitters in Cooper Landing, he recognized the tell-tale signs of the dog's injury.

"The type of wound that it is, the chop is so lean -- like his foot was in a paper cutter -- I think it had to be a caused by a trap," he said.

While many trappers would consider leaving a trap unchecked for more than 30 days unethical, the State of Alaska does not require trappers to check their traps regularly. However, in this area of the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, all leghold traps must be checked at least every four days.

This is not an isolated incident. In 2007, approximately half a mile upstream from the Russian River Ferry crossing, troopers found the carcass of an adult black bear, dead for at least two days, that had been caught in a trapper's snare set for wolf or coyote two months after trapping season had closed.

Lowe said once reunited with Kenai, he tried to track the bloody paw prints back to a trap, to alert authorities if it was set illegally, but a fresh snowfall complicated his efforts.

Since returning home, Kenai is slowly putting on weight and the Lowes are still working with veterinarians to save the rest of his paw.

"He's on antibiotics and bed rest," Lowe said. "We want to keep him immobilized so that it can heal. He wears a bandage and plastic bag over it when he walks around."

For years, Kenai has accompanied Lowe to work at the outfitting business. As a result the dog has made many friends.

"He's a celebrity around here," Lowe said. "Everybody knows him, and there's Internet sites and blogs about him. He doesn't even eat dog food in summer -- he doesn't have to, people cook him steaks."

As such, many people have come to wish him well upon hearing of his return.

"He's received several calls, e-mails and doggy treats since he's been home" Lowe said. "Everyone's happy he's back, he's happy he's back and we're happy to have him back."


Source: http://www.peninsulaclarion.com/stories/040410/new_601991076.shtml

Cute Little Dog

One Lucky Pup
Fox and Bunny and Woodpecker Stew

I started running to and from my pilates classes this week. It’s not far, just under a mile and a half each way. I figure it helps me get the most bang for my caloric buck. Or something.

So I’m running there today (ok fine, jogging and clutching all my shit in my hands, gasping for breath like a wild boar) and there’s this cute little dog rummaging through a pile of what my dad would term “lawn mulch” on the side of the road. You know, big clippings from around someone’s house — palm fronds, tree branches, that kind of stuff. He was so engrossed I didn’t think he even noticed me, and I would have stopped to check his tag and return him home (surely one of the few houses nearby) had I not been late to class.

So I’m huffing along and he sprints after me, gleefully galloping along beside me the rest of the way there. The problem is, he’s young — I don’t know, maybe one or two? — and rocketing through traffic without so much as batting an eye, all while beaming at me. And I’m running through the hood, not on busy streets, but still. Drivers have to slow or swerve or stop, and all give me these withering death stares like how could you be such a bad pet owner. But I’m late, and huffing, and opt not to defend myself to annoyed strangers.

So we finally get there, after running into someone I haven’t seen since high school (go figure), and the parking lot is full of people coming and going from different workouts. So of course everyone is cooing over him and there’s all sorts of confusion as to whether or not he’s mine or if someone else saw him come from another direction, blah blah blah, I had to tell my story like sixteen times. And of course the pup is ECSTATIC to be getting so much attention.

Turns out the gym is directly next door to a vet. Who knew? Not I, that’s for sure. So some woman mentions that little tidbit and takes it upon herself to take him there for safekeeping. After pilates (which, by the way, I HIGHLY discourage anyone from wearing running shorts to pilates — you know the kind that slit all the way up the sides and have the mesh underwear-esque lining? — yeah well the whole legs in the air and spilts and such make for a horrifying hour during which EVERYONE thinks you’re wearing ridiculous floozie pants and parading your grannie panties for all to see — they’re RUNNING SHORTS, I swear!), I seek out the woman and ask her what the deal is.

The pup was imbeded with one of those chips (yay!) and the vet was able to track down the owner, who promptly said the dog ran away weeks ago and that he didn’t want it back (how’s THAT for pet owner FAIL?). So the woman was going to take it home and see if she could find a good home for it (the alternative being it would be shipped to the glue factory, aka pound); I gave her my name and number and figured I was just about to make my mom’s YEAR by granting her the dog that we’ve denied her for decades.

So I’m running home, getting more and more excited about this dog surprise for my mom, and wondering what she’ll call it. The cat’s name is “Ziggy Stardust” (think Bowie), which is about the worst name you could possibly come up with for an animal. (Hence we call him The Pick. WAY better.) And I’m all up in my thoughts and not paying attention to the world (a nifty little trick you learn in high school cross country to distract yourself as you’re running so many wretched miles) and some random dude sort of half pulls over to the side of the road (while blocking as many cars as possible) and starts talking to me through his window. And I’m all “whaaa?” Enter scratching noise as you yank a needle across a playing record.

I make him properly pull over and guess what he’s looking for? His dog! And before I even ask him to describe it I’m all beside myself and “yes I’ve seen it, I know exactly where it is, let’s get you your dog!!!!” And then reality sets in and I’m like uhh, maybe you should describe your dog. Small, black, white feet and belly, short hair, blue handkerchief around his neck — yup, that’s him. So I hop in and direct him to the gym/vet and the two of them jumped all over each other. That dude was CRAZY happy to see his dog. And the pup took the opportunity to scratch up my poor legs some more.

So the back story, to fill in the blanks, is that this guy found the dog at a gas station a few weeks ago and adopted him. Hence he had no idea who the owner was, and had never thought to have the dog checked if he had a chip in him. (Uh, isn’t that the point to the chip? You mean there are lost dogs and people aren’t bothering to take them to vets to CHECK?!) Anyway. So the original owner doesn’t want him, and the newly adoptive owner is stoked to have him back. Pun will never miss the dog she almost had. (And if you can believe it I told her the story like a giddy little school girl and she was all “eh.” Eh? EH?!? That’s the last time I almost bring you a pup home lady.)

But seriously — how weird is it that both the dog AND the owner found me?? I mean, really. If that guy hadn’t asked, he never would have seen his dog again. That’s some seriously nutso shit. And me? I am PUMPED about the karma headed my way.

Source: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/not+like+that+you+sickos

Roby, Pembroke Welsh Corgi

Missing for 3 1/2 years, lost dog finally home
By Rick Smith
April 23, 2010

Jessica Cochran hugs her dog for the first time in almost four years after she was reunited with her missing dog, Roby, at Kirby Park on Thursday. Cochran, who moved from San Angelo in 2007, drove 1,000 miles from Iowa to retrieve her dog after it was left at the animal shelter.

SAN ANGELO, Texas — When the young woman stepped back outside, her “baby” was gone.

Jessica Cochran had taken Roby, her Pembroke Welsh Corgi, into the front yard of her San Angelo home for his regular evening ritual. Her well-trained 2 1/2-year-old dog knew the drill: Go down the steps. Do your business. Come right back.

But Roby never came home on the November night 3 1/2 years ago.

Cochran, an Iowa native who had been stationed at Goodfellow Air Force Base, saw a dark pickup driving away into the night.

Roby had vanished.

Big dogs with short legs, Corgis are bred to herding animals. They’re friendly and loving — and expensive. To Cochran, pets are family. She bought Roby from a San Angelo breeder when the pup was 8 1/2 weeks old. They had been together ever since.

“He was my buddy,” she said. “We went everywhere together.”

She wouldn’t give him up without a fight.

Cochran filed a police report. She put up notices in veterinary offices and pet stores, visited and revisited the animal shelter, drove up and down alleys, looking in yards. She ran an ad in the newspaper.

Nothing.

When she left San Angelo a year later, Cochran knew she would never see Roby again.

“When I moved away, I kind of learned to move on and give up hope,” she said. “My pets are my kids, and I just hoped somebody was taking care of him.”

But, she said, “I never forgot him.”

She moved to Wyoming first. Then, two weeks ago, days before a scheduled move to her home state, Iowa, she received a certified letter from San Angelo’s animal shelter.

“I was shaking,” she said. “Everything was going through my head. Was he found dead?”

She opened the letter and cried.

“What’s wrong?” her father asked.

“It’s Roby,” she told him. “He’s home.”

Someone anonymously left Roby in an after-hours kennel at the shelter. He looked cared for. Shelter workers scanned a microchip implanted between the Corgi’s shoulder blades and found contact information.

Would she come get her dog?

In the middle of a move, Cochran asked San Angelo best friend Mindy Ross to pick up Roby and keep him safe.

Late Thursday afternoon, Cochran ended a 1,000-mile drive from Iowa at Kirby Park in San Angelo.

A few minutes later, Mindy drove up and opened the car door.

Roby jumped out. Sniffed the air. Pricked up his ears.

“Roby!” called Cochran. “Look Roby! Come here!”

He barreled across the lawn, into Cochran’s waiting arms.

“Where have you been?” she asked, hugging her dog.

“Let’s go home.”



Source: http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2010/apr/23/missing-for-3-12-years-lost-dog-finally-finally/
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Bruno, Brussels Griffon

A Little Dog Touches Off a Big Search
By Fernanda Santos
April 14, 2010, 9:26 am

Jeff Simmons and Alfonso Quiroz and their dog, Bruno, in Manhattan on Tuesday. Bruno was lost and found in Queens.

This is the story of a dog with his own Facebook page and newsletter who slipped away from his collar and spent hours and hours wandering the streets of Jackson Heights, Queens, until a stranger took him home. It is also the story of the speed of modern communications, lots of posters, a few coincidences, and two dog owners with more than your average connections.

The dog’s name is Bruno the Brussels, and he is somewhat obsessed with squirrels, of the plastic squeaky type. He spends most week days at a doggy day care in TriBeCa, but on Thursday, his owners, Alfonso Quiroz and Jeff Simmons, a former reporter for NY1 News, had early-morning plans that forced a change in routine. They left Bruno at home and entrusted a neighbor with taking the dog out for walks at noon and 5 p.m.

The neighbor had trouble fitting Bruno into a harness, and so clipped Bruno’s leash to his collar instead. As they strolled along 81st Street, near 34th Avenue, Bruno wiggled out of his collar and ran away.

“The dog just got loose,” said a text message that Mr. Quiroz received sometime around noon that day.

Mr. Quiroz, a spokesman for Con Edison, hopped on a cab, bound for home. Along the way, he called his sister in Chicago and asked her to design a simple lost-dog poster with Bruno’s picture and description, and then e-mail the poster to him. Mr. Quiroz also asked a friend to do some research on the Web about how to search for a lost dog.

“Bruno,” Mr. Quiroz said, “means the world to Jeff and I.”

A Brussels griffon, Bruno was the last in a litter of puppies born in southern New Jersey on Jan. 5, 2009. He has short caramel hair, floppy ears and eyes that seem to beg for your undivided attention. Mr. Simmons, who was allergic to dogs as a child, bought it last June for Mr. Quiroz, who grew up in a house full of them.

Mr. Quiroz made 3,000 copies of the poster his sister had created. But before he left the house on Thursday at 1:59 p.m., he posted a message on Bruno’s Facebook page. “Bruno the Brussels is lost,” the message said. “Please look for him.”

Right about that time, Juan Arroyave, a window mechanic from Colombia who lives in College Point, Queens, was leaving a store on Roosevelt Avenue, by 84th Street, when he saw Bruno running in and out of traffic, with no one behind him. Mr. Arroyave did not think much of it until he spotted Bruno again, about 10 blocks from where he had first seen him on Roosevelt Avenue.

“I thought to myself, ‘This dog is too beautiful to be a street dog,’ ” Mr. Arroyave said. “So I went running after him until I caught him.”

Mr. Arroyave took Bruno home and started calling him “niño,” which is also the name of his Shih Tzu, who had disappeared once, for 15 days, and was found in a house three blocks away.

Meanwhile, Mr. Quiroz, Mr. Simmons and an army of helpers that included a former city councilwoman, Helen Sears, and an assemblyman, Michael G. DenDekker, were traveling the streets in and around Jackson Heights, looking for Bruno. Mr. Simmons found himself leaning out the window of Mr. Sears’s car at one point, squeezing Bruno’s favorite toy squirrel and calling his name.

“Someone told us early on that Bruno is a Velcro dog because when he sleeps at night, he’ll curl up by your feet; when he sits on the couch, he’ll put his rump against your leg,” said Mr. Simmons, vice president for communications at the Alliance for Downtown New York. “He needs human contact to feel secure and that’s what got to us, that he could be all alone out there.”

Mr. Arroyave said that Bruno tried to snuggle against him in bed at night, but he shooed him away.

By Friday morning, at least 20,000 people had received an e-mail message with Bruno’s wanted poster attached to it, or all the names that Yetta Kurland, who ran against City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn in the Democratic primaries last September, had compiled during her campaign. A call for help went up on NY1 News and on neighborhood e-mail groups.

Mr. Quiroz, Mr. Simmons, their neighbors and their friends spent hours distributing the posters in animal clinics and pet shops, and affixing them to store windows on 37th Avenue, front doors on 34th Avenue and lampposts along Northern Boulevard.

That is where Mr. Arroyave found one of them Friday afternoon. He had gone back to the area to see if he would come across some sign of an owner looking for a lost dog. He called a cellphone number listed on the poster and reached Mr. Quiroz. “I got your dog,” Mr. Arroyave told him.

Mr. Quiroz said that when he was in college, he watched the 1948 Italian classic “Bicycle Thieves,” about a man who wanders the streets of Rome searching for his stolen bicycle and takes his young son, Bruno, in tow.

Mr. Quiroz said that the boy in the movie and his dog had the same sad eyes. He said it was those eyes that he first saw emerge from behind a wall when he walked into Mr. Arroyave’s home Friday night and called Bruno’s name.

Source: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/a-little-dog-touches-off-a-big-search/
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