Contessa, maltese

This story is told in 2 parts -- first the plea via the media for the return of the missing dog, then the follow-up story after the dog was reunited with the owner.

Owner pleads for stolen dog's return
Posted at: 12/18/2009
By: Kayla Anderson, Eyewityness News 4; Taryn Bianchin, KOB.com

An Albuquerque woman is devastated after someone stole the dog that helped detect her breast cancer.

Reverend Josephina Chavez put her 11-year-old Maltese, Contessa, outside Tuesday morning. A couple of minutes later, her neighbor came over and told Chavez what she had seen. "She told her, ‘someone just came, drove up to your house, picked up your dog and put it in the car’," retold Karina Mora, granddaughter of the neighbor.

Chavez’s doctor certified Contessa as a service dog because she pawed at Chavez's chest before doctors found breast cancer.

The good news is the dog is micro-chipped.

“At some point or another, if somebody is bound and determined to take your pet, down the road, that'll catch up with them," said city animal welfare spokesman Rick de Reyes.

It’s been four days and Contessa hasn’t returned. Chavez says if the dog-napper won't return Contessa, they need to know that she has health problems and needs special food.

Chavez doesn't have money for a reward, but says if someone wants to come forward one way or another, she'll pay whatever she can.

"If you don't give her back, please take care of her. But, if you ever not want her, bring her back. No questions asked. Just throw her in the yard… No questions asked," Chavez said.

Source: http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S1322678.shtml

Woman reunited with stolen dog
Posted 12/19/2009 8:08 PM
By: Cristina Rodda, Eyewitness News 4; Charlie Pabst, KOB.com

A breast cancer survivor in search of her greatest companion got her Christmas miracle when her dog "Contessa" was returned home.

Less than 12 hours after Rev. Josephina Chavez made a public plea for the safe return of her Maltese, "Contessa," she got the call she'd been praying for, thanks to one of our viewers.

John Cormier saw our report Friday, and said Saturday, "We were sitting there going why would anyone throw this lovely dog out? It's just perfect. It didn't make sense to us. When we saw the story, then it started to make sense. We knew right away that was the dog."

Rev. Chavez could not hold back the tears when she was returned with her dog "Contessa." Rev. Chavez said "Contessa" made her aware of her breast cancer by pawing at the area before it was diagnosed..

When she talked to our cameras on Friday, she didn't know that "Contessa" was safe. Cormier's mother-in-law had found it.

It turns out, whoever took "Contessa" just stopped in a neighborhood and threw it out of the car the same day it went missing.

Cormier says they took her into their home.

"We named her Christmas because of the miracle," Cormier said. "We thought we'd saved this dog but we think the real miracle is that we found her rightful owner."

The Cormier family tried to find the dog's owner, but found out its microchip wasn't registered.

They planned on keeping it until they saw the story.

Chavez says this isn't the first time someone's tried to take "Contessa," but she plans on putting a larger fence around her home to keep it from happening again.

Source: http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S1323124.shtml

Tabu, a brown mixed breed dog

Recently I snagged the corrugated cardboard "box" that a white board had arrived in, at my office, and I thought it would be good to use to make a large LOST DOG sign. And I'm involved in a lost dog search for which it might be a good resource for spreading the word effectively. I wanted to describe, and show a picture of, an intersection alert to the dog's owner. And what do you know, Kat Albrecht, founder of the Missing Pet Partnership had JUST blogged about a highly successful intersection alert she'd conducted. Enjoy the story.


Rejoice With Those Who Rejoice (Tabu's Story)
December 2009

THIS is how to recover a lost dog. We call it an ”Intersection Alert” or a ”Lost Dog Protest” and it grabs the attention of people. Missing Pet Partnership (MPP) has had great success with this recovery technique, including the rapid (15 minute) recovery of a lost Chihuahua named Sukhi at the 4th of July (see The Seattle Times story). We use giant, florescent LOST DOG posters and volunteers wearing bright green LOST PET RESCUE vests who “market” a lost dog at a major intersection in the immediate area where the dog vanished.

Volunteers Conduct Intersection Alert

Intersection alerts are most effective when conducted at major intersections with 6 to 8 volunteers during commute hours. They are highly successful on cases of lost purebred dogs that are easy to describe in a few words like “YELLOW LAB” or ”WHITE POODLE, BLUE COLLAR.” If a passersby can read a few words and visualize what the missing dog looks like, then we can get our message out to hundreds of people in a matter of hours. Well, we had none of those factors working in our favor last week when we tried to recover a mixed breed dog on the run for 9 days in her Seattle neighborhood.

“Tabu” was a 14-year-old hard-to-describe brown mixed breed dog with ears that were sometimes pointy, sometimes floppy. How do you put THAT description into five words? And we only had three volunteers: myself, Jim Branson, and Sam Franklin. Sam was there because she knew exactly what it was like to have lost a dog. Sam’s Bassett Hound, Daisy, was lost for 3 months until MPP was able to help her humanely trap the skittish dog (see Sam’s testimonial here). So it was three MPP volunteers plus Mike, Tabu’s owner. And it was noon on Saturday, not exactly rush hour traffic. We each set up at a corner and started twirling our signs.

Actually, we didn’t move the signs around like real sign twirlers do. We made it easy for drivers to read our message as they pulled up to the 4-way stop sign. We held a stack of fliers with a color photo of Tabu that included Mike and Rohini’s cell phone numbers. I found that if I held the flyer out and waved it as driver’s pulled up to the stop sign, many would roll down their passenger window so I could quickly hand it to them.

We probably handed out 500 fliers during the next few hours. At one point, I was the only one left on the corner because Sam had left for work, Mike had headed off to check on what turned out to be a false sighting, and Jim had headed off in another direction on another false sighting. I had a line of drivers who seemed pissed that I was distracting or maybe delaying them from their last minute Christmas shopping. My feet were killing me. Then it started to rain. It was at that point that discouragement hit. I began to question just why I was standing alone in the rain on a street corner. Thankfully, minutes later everything changed. A man who had one of the flyers with him called Mike. Tabu was in his front yard, laying by his porch. Mike rushed off and returned to our intersection just fifteen minutes later – with Tabu in his car!

We were all elated! After high-fiving Jim, we both followed Mike back to his house. I was there when he let Tabu inside where she drank water and ate some food. I snapped a picture as she dropped to the ground, grunted, and rolled back and forth with pleasure on a small rug on the wooden floor. Mike said Tabu rolled like that with anything that had their scent on it. I waited until Rohini got home because I wanted to see her joy. She had been torn apart with Tabu’s disappearance. Tabu had been a part of her life since she was a puppy. As Rohini gave me a big hug and thanked me, it reminded me of my signature verse. Back in 1997 when I first made the decision to help people search for their lost pets, I came across a Bible verse that confirmed that pet detective work was my calling. The verse is Romans 12:15 which says, ”Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.”

After things settled down, I asked Mike and Rohini to let me take a reunion picture of them with Tabu. The smile on Rohini’s face says it all - this family was, once again, complete. It was a good day to rejoice!

Source: http://katalbrecht.com/blog/?p=208

Penelope, chihuahua/JRT mix

This story comes from the files of my group of lost dog recovery volunteers, of a dog that was lost just before a snowstorm (in December 2009). The search lasted from a Thursday to a Sunday, and in that time, Penelope did have a run-in with a car that required veterinary care to include removal of an eye. But we focus on the good, which is that she was found in a few days, got that care that she needed, and she's now happy at home. We get two sides of this story:


From Penelope’s adoptors:

We adopted Penelope on a Tuesday. On Thursday around 4pm, she got spooked by something and bolted from the house. She was so fast, and we lost track of her.

It's not possible to describe how sick and worried we both felt. We were concerned that she would not have any instinct to try to find her way back home, since she hardly knew our house as home after only two days.

We immediately called the rescue group we'd adopted her through, as well as a friend who organizes searches for lost dogs. She and several other incredible folks volunteer their time to do this; their group is called AWOL Dogs. Thanks to their advice and assistance, within a few hours notices had been posted to our local listserv and Craigslist, a blog had been started, and flyers started going up around our neighborhood.

The search for Penny over the following days included emails and phone calls to area vets, churches, schools, dog walkers, etc, more listserv postings, tons of flyering, and also the assistance of a professional dog tracker.

It was a cold weekend. It snowed and rained on Saturday, which kept some folks away that had planned to come out and help. The bad timing for that kind of weather was so frustrating. I had to tell myself that Penelope was strong and smart, that she'd find a safe place to stay.

On Sunday morning we got an email from Penny's most recent foster mom, who was tireless searching along with us. She said she'd had a dream that Penny was found.

Maybe 30 minutes later the phone rang; I nearly fell over trying to grab it. It was the call we had been hoping for since Thursday! A woman's voice said, “We found Penelope and my neighbor is taking her to the animal hospital right now.” I was putting on my shoes, writing down an address, and crying all at once. My husband was already at the door, car keys in hand, saying, 'Tell me where to drive.'

We arrived at the animal hospital, and met Edward and Dawn, Penny's guardian angels. The vet took us back to see Penny and confirm that it was her. I was nervous that she might not know us, but she did and immediately started licking our hands and faces. The sense of relief was overwhelming.

Now, three weeks later, Penelope is just about 100% healed. She has fully adjusted to seeing with one eye. She is playful, silly, intelligent, and loving. She is a true gift.

From the folks who found Penelope:

Dawn and I were just getting up and about ready to make the bed. I was dawdling, putting on slippers or something, so Dawn started opening the curtains while she was waiting. She noticed a dog coming into our driveway, which we share with our neighbor's Becky Morrison and Geoff Jackson, and Dawn mentioned to me that the dog didn't seem to have an accompanying human. I wanted to rush down right away to check it out, but Dawn insisted on making the bed first.

By the time I got downstairs, the dog had wandered into Becky and Geoff's back yard, digging in the dirt and leaves by the fence. I called and made smooching noises, which seemed to make the dog wary of me. She dashed to the back of the yard and behind the garage. There's a smidgen of fence, though, behind the garage and between our two yards, so the dog was now blocked in with nowhere else to escape.

By this time Geoff had noticed that I was wandering around his back yard, so he came out and asked me what was the deal. I pointed out the dog. It seemed to have mud splashed on its head and eye, or maybe the eye was injured. We couldn't really tell.

We thought maybe we could coax it out with some food. Geoff went inside to get some cat food, while I stood watch, the dog and I watching each other from opposite sides of the garage. I knelt and made soothing cooing and smooching noises while the dog looked at me warily and shivered. I inched closer and closer and the dog let me scratch its shoulder without biting me, so I scooped it up gently and backed out of the small space.

Geoff was returning with a bowl of wet food as I was carrying the dog to our back porch. The dog scurried to the opposite corner of the porch from us and sat & shivered some more, but was hungry enough to scarf up the whole bowl of food. Dawn came out from the kitchen, where she had started to make breakfast, and took one look at the dog's eye and declared we were going to the vet immediately. She got dressed while Geoff and I watched over the dog, then I went and got dressed when Dawn returned.

Dawn and Geoff discussed having seen fliers and a notice on the listerv about a missing dog, so Geoff volunteered to do some research to find the owners while Dawn and I drove to Friendship Animal Hospital in Tenleytown, which we knew was an emergency hospital because we had taken our cat Evie there once when our regular vet Union Vet Clinic was closed for the night.

We were on our way there when you called us and suggested we go to Rockville instead. Frankly, we were just the tiniest bit lost trying to find Friendship, so we were not only relieved to be in touch with the owners, and to find out her name is Penelope, but we were thankful that you gave us actual directions to an actual hospital. Whew!

We got to the hospital and they took her back and then y'all arrived and met Dawn and me, so you know the rest.

It all just happened to work out, I think. We were actually supposed to have our nieces for the weekend, but that all got canceled because of the snow. We probably wouldn't have been getting up and making the bed at that time if we'd had the nieces, so it was lucky that Dawn spotted Penelope when she did. And it just so happens that I went out after we made the bed, at the same time Penelope was in the back yard and the only place for her to run away was behind the garage, where she was trapped and I was able to nab her. I'm glad it all worked out, but it was just luck rather than any actual skill on our part.

I'm glad Penelope is doing better and we hope to see her soon.

More info about the search for Penelope on her blog at: http://findpenelope.blogspot.com/

Chloe, Golden Retriever

Dog missing after car accident to be reunited with owner
By Will Jones
Published: December 25, 2009

As Jean Burton can attest, the best Christmas presents don't always come down the chimney. Sometimes, they walk on bloody paws through the garage door.

Burton took solace in her Christmas Eve yesterday, knowing that she helped return a dog to a Florida family after the animal was ejected early Saturday from a car that overturned on Interstate 295 in eastern Henrico County.

"It's like a Christmas miracle," Burton said as relatives of the dog's owner drove from Pennsylvania to Richmond for the reunion.

Chloe, a 6-year-old golden retriever mix, apparently took off after Saturday's accident and found her way to Burton's house on LaFrance Road near I-295. Burton opened her garage door during the snowstorm to let her three dogs out. Chloe walked in, leaving bloody pawprints in the snow.

Burton took care of the dog for five days and nicknamed her Madame Butterfly. "She was so ladylike," and such a contrast to Burton's male dogs, Max, Rufus and Button, she said.

Burton was talking to a niece Wednesday night when the niece recalled news reports of Saturday's accident and the lost dog. Within a few hours, relatives of Burton had contacted the family of Chloe's owner, Allison Labar. Photos and a numerical tattoo on the dog's thigh confirmed that she was Chloe. Yesterday, the animal was checked out at a local veterinarian's office and found to have a pulled tendon and other minor injuries.

"It's all things that will heal on their own," said Michelle Felmly, Labar's sister.

Labar, who suffered a broken clavicle and a dislocated shoulder in Saturday's accident and is now hospitalized with pneumonia in Pennsylvania, was overjoyed with the news that her dog had been found in good health. "She cried hysterically. She's still crying," Felmly said.

Felmly said her phone rang nonstop for four days with people in the Richmond area and as far away as Alabama and Minnesota offering assistance. She said the family was comforted by the gestures.

"All our Christmas stuff is put on hold," she said yesterday while en route to Richmond, "but this is the best gift we could possibly get."

Donna Gill, Burton's daughter, credited Chloe for picking such a loving home to seek refuge. "It was meant to be."

Source: http://www2.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/article/CHLO25_20091224-212603/313483/