Page 64 - Chow Life - 2025 01 Spring

and, on that side, I had the dismal thought that he My car s not an off-road vehicle. But that day, it
could have fallen over a cliff there into the river
and drowned in a whirlpool or been eaten by an
alligator. The rain soaked me to the bone, so I had
to repeatedly go home and change. If he were even
still alive, I knew he would be freezing. I focused
my driving searches of areas where he may have
found cover in an abandoned garage or house.
Turned out some just looked abandoned and I
thought I was going to get shot on one occasion. I
did find a cat and a chicken. No dog, though.
I redid and reposted the flyers again; the store-
printed ones had a tiny photo so I made it as big as
possible and, this time, used neon-colored printer
paper. I expanded the range to about 5 miles,
including out-of-range sites like dump sites and
churches that would attract people from a wide
area. The signs or posts were working, sort of: I
fielded call after call of sightings, but they were all
of pit-mixes and Beagle- or Chihuahua-sized dogs,
which the callers generously offered to me in case I
couldn’t find mine.
The next day dawned dry. We decided to post
flyers door to door wedging them in people’s
mailbox stands along our search routes.
Meanwhile, Robert had large 12x24-inch posters
printed at Walmart which we began mounting in
preparation to post at the major intersections. By
this time, my local lost-dog Facebook post had
been shared hundreds of times and, while I had
not focused on the dog show community since
nobody else lives close, it made it there. I had
assumed this would be no help, but I was wrong.
Jennifer Pearce was 150 miles away but set to work
arranging for a speaker system that would record
and amplify our calling (by this time I had almost
lost my voice), and also worked on getting a friend
with a drone to find local drone hobbyists. And
Joyce DeBraganca came from the next town to aid
more manpower (and fresh enthusiasm) however
we needed her.
Another call came in claiming to have seen him
but in the most improbably place yet: across the
river. Still, every call must be taken seriously and,
when they said, “He looks just like the photo, only
he has fluffy ears,” I was already throwing the signs
out of the way and yelling for everyone to get in
the cars.
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was a genuine mud-bogging machine. The road
leading to where he’d been spotted was almost
impassable, and the only way I could avoid getting
stuck was by flooring it and even taking a few
jumps sort of, by accident. Of course, it didn’t help
that is was the wrong road…and we had to go back
the way we came and then head down the right
road. The car didn’t drive right by that point, but
it kept going. When we arrived at our destination,
the hikers who had called were waiting (turns out
the wife had sent the husband back 15 miles to my
side of the river to get the phone umber off the
poster they’d seen there). The trails were closed
to all but foot traffic so Joyce and I set down the
trail where they said they’d seen him. No Danger,
but we spotted what was clearly a hair-foot dog
print of the right size. But the trails forked and
went for miles, and we saw nothing beyond that
one print. We were going to have to turn back
soon. Just then, up drove Robert and Maggie. It
turns out Maggie is some kind of a safe-cracker or
something. She actually guessed the code for the
combination lock that held the gate closed. Hint:
If a gate has a padlock, and there’s a sign next to it
with a contact number – at least one from some
state agency like the Forestry division, try using
the last four digits of the phone number as the
combination. I was voted to take the fall and go to
jail when we were caught.
We drove for miles on deserted trails, but there
was no evidence of Danger, hikers nor (luckily)
forest rangers. We finally had to turn back
in defeat, making plans to hire searchers on
horseback who had contacted us and a tracking
dog if we could find one.
And then, there he was. Standing in the path in
front of us. I’d heard stories about how quickly
Salukis turn feral, so it was no surprise he took off
running when I got out and called him. We gave
chase, catching a glimpse of him every so often
as he would stop and look down the path at us,
clearly curious and unsure. We always stayed on
the main path; I don’t know about other breeds,
but I do know that given a choice, a Saluki will
always take the biggest and most obvious trail and
Danger stayed true to form. When I could, I’d get
out and call, but he wasn’t falling for it. I’d brought
another one of my dogs, who finally barked at