Tasha, a mixed breed dog

I have another local story to tell, which I wasn’t involved in but I kept tabs on the case because it was worked by my teammates. After weeks of a very frustrating search (well, almost all searches are very frustrating!!) they got INCREDIBLY lucky with this one! Here’s what happened. Enjoy the story.

Tasha in better diggs than she's been in for the last several weeks. Well maybe better than any home she ever had before!

Tasha was a rescue that was shipped to a Washington DC location, along with a lot of other dogs, probably from some rural area where dogs have a much harder time finding homes. Lots of rescues bring dogs in from rural locations surrounding the Washington metropolitan area, foster them while they ready them for forever homes, and find those homes for them.

So, the story goes that pretty much the moment that Tasha arrived in town, she took off. Over the weeks, there were dozens and dozens of sightings – maybe a hundred or more. There were feeding station and trapping efforts going on, surveillance cameras, and a lot of fliering to help generate those sighting calls.

It became routine that she would wander in and out of backyards in a residential area – even fenced yards. Some neighbors were cooperative and interested in helping, others not so much. Eventually my partners came up with the idea to try to trap her in a yard, and I think some attempts were made by property owners to do it. But an example of an attempt that didn’t go well was one where there were two gates and they’d only closed one, so Tasha could just walk out the other one.

Now, the last few days there have been some high winds. And late Monday afternoon, there were high winds behind the gate of the yard that Tasha was nosing around in. And bam!!!! Gate closed behind her!!!!

The fence was a 4’ fence with some kind of 2’ lattice work making it more like 6’ high. Luckily she’s not a jumper; instead, she howled for help!!! The homeowners heard her, ran out to find a flier, and called the number. Several of my team members converged on the yard. There was one area where there was no lattice work, so one team member went around and stood outside the fence while the others went in – just in case she tried to jump. They moved in on her ready to have to chase her around the yard to be able to leash her, but as it turned out, by this time, she was done running.

And with that, the story ended as abruptly as it started!!! She’s now entered rescue, is at a foster home, and a forever home is being sought for her.

Here Tasha interacts with another dog in her temporary foster home.

Tasha's blog has a log of what went on in the search is at http://www.findtasha.blogspot.com