Bella

Tino found her, but we stopped our pursuit.

Bella and her owner are new to the DuPont area.  They were on a walk when a loud truck went by, and Bella was startled.  She is 75 pounds and very strong, and she jerked the leash out of her owner’s hand.  I want to note that I am a very experienced dog handler.  I work with dogs daily, and it is my job to find lost dogs, so I know all of the ways that dogs go missing.  This past Sunday, I was training with Raven, and I started her on the scent trail to find Raphael.  About 100 yards into the search, as Raven was hot on the scent trail, I fumbled the leash while transferring it from one hand to the other, and Raven took off like a rocket on the scent trail, into the woods and out of sight. I called ahead to Brenda, Raphi’s person, that Raven might be coming without me, and to watch out for her.  After about 90 seconds, Raven came charging back to me.  It was such a relief.  I was especially relieved because her GPS unit had died and I was supposed to charge the tracker before going to training, and I had forgotten.  I made a mistake that anyone could make, two mistakes, actually, and I got lucky that Raven came back to me before she could get into any trouble.  On September 3rd, Bella yanked the leash out of her owner’s hand, and disappeared on the streets of Dupont, very close to a freeway entrance.  The next day, Bella’s owner, John, found half of her leash wrapped around some shrubs, nearby.  Bella had become stuck, and then chewed through the leash.  4 days later, she was seen on the golf course, two miles from the point of escape.  This golf course had large patches of forest between the holes, with plenty of places for a nervous dog to hide.

D. D. Ponder helps find hundreds of lost dogs, and she came to the area to set up a wildlife camera where there was a possible sighting. The sighting at that location turned out not to be Bella.  D. D. handed out fliers in the area and put up signs.  John recently had surgery and wasn’t supposed to be walking much.  The golf course loaned him a cart, so he could look around the golf course for Bella.  D. D. recommend that John call Three Retrievers so that Tino could try to find Bella.

When Tino and I came out, on the 10th, we met John to get a scent article from him.  He gave us a brush he had used on Bella recently.  The point where Bella had been seen, two days earlier, on the 9th hole, was about a 20 minute walk from where we met John, so Tino and I started walking through the woods and to the 9th hole.  John stayed with his vehicle and drove around hoping to get a sighting of Bella if she emerged from the woods.

As Tino and I were walking along a gravel trail, towards the 9th hole, an employee of the course came by on a cart.  I stopped him and asked him if he had seen a dog.  He said Yes!  He had seen a dog matching Bella’s description on the 8th hole about half an hour earlier.  Tino and I walked to the area he described and I presented the scent item to him.  Tino started tracking, at a fairly casual pace.  Because he wasn’t pulling very hard, I thought we might be on an old scent trail.  He came to a point where it seemed as if Bella had peed recently, and he started pulling harder.  I saw Bella about 100 feet ahead of us!  Tino did not see her because he was busy sniffing, using his nose and not his eyes.  Bella did see us coming, and she slowly moved off to the northeast.  I texted John that we had seen Bella and she was moving his way.  I told him he should park by the edge of the woods and watch for her.

When Tino got to the point where Bella had just been, he got the fresh scent, just minutes old, and started pulling harder.  Because we were on an abandoned road, we were able to be fairly quiet.  I didn’t want to spook Bella.  It was good that she was going towards her owner.  After about five minutes, I saw Bella again, and Tino still didn’t see her because he is lower to the ground and couldn’t see over the brush.  Because Bella was still moving towards her owner, I decided to let Tino keep tracking, while trying to keep him as quiet as possible.  For Tino to be hot on a fresh scent trail, that is what I love most about this work.  It’s what we train for.  It is fun in training, but it is exhilarating when you are on the trail of an actual lost dog. Really, I feel like 15,000 years of co-evolution have set us up for exactly this scenario, a dog and his human tracking a scent trail, the two species working together to accomplish what neither of them could do alone.  More than anything, I love to follow the scent trails of lost pets.  As much as I wanted Tino to track right up to Bella, I had to balance that against the possibility of spooking Bella out of the area.  I was prepared to stop Tino if I thought we were going to decrease the odds of her being captured eventually.  Since we were moving towards John, I decided to keep going.

Bella had turned into a brushy area, with scotch broom, salal, and blackberries.  This made it harder for me to stay quiet.  I tried to watch my footing, and to avoid stepping on dry twigs, but with Tino pulling me off balance, I couldn’t always step in the right places.  A third time, I saw Bella in the distance, about 80 feet ahead.  I stopped Tino, and Bella stopped to look back at us.  Tino still couldn’t see her, even though he could smell that she was close.  I thought that Bella might come towards us, but after a moment of checking me out, she moved away again.  Her path had curved, and she was moving away from John’s position, and back towards the 8th hole.  I stopped Tino from searching any more, and told him he was a good boy.  As we walked out of the woods and towards the gravel path, I thought I might have heard Bella’s tags, like she was following us.  I never did see her again that day, though.

I was very proud of Tino’s excellent search work, and I gave him his string cheese as a reward.  We also played fetch with a large stick.  We went back to where our car was parked and I talked to John.  I told him that I thought Bella would come back to this area by the edge of the woods, near the school.  I asked John to sacrifice the shirt he was wearing in order to make scent lures.  He cut it into about 40 strips, and I walked from the 8th hole to the point on Bella’s path that came closest to the road.  I tied the ribbons of fabric at about dog-nose height on the branches of the scotch broom and the salal.  Normally, I might just ask a dog’s owner to walk a path to create a scent trail for the lost dog to follow, but we used the scent strips because John couldn’t walk that far.

D. D. brought  a large trap and she set it up in the woods, not too far from the path that led to the golf course.  D. D. set one of her wildlife cameras and I set one of mine.  I felt good about the odds that Bella would come to the trap.

That night, at about 9:30, D. D. and John met at the trap so she could explain what to do if Bella went in the trap late at night.  After they walked away from the trap and returned to their cars, D. D. thought she heard jingling, possibly Bella’s tags, like she was nearby.  John walked closer to the woods, and he talked in a normal tone of voice, as D. D. had instructed him.  He heard Bella’s tags nearby in the darkness.  He avoided looking at Bella, as D. D. had directed, because direct eye contact can cause a skittish dog to run.  John walked back towards D. D., and Bella started following him. When Bella got into John’s fresh scent trail, she ran up to him and jumped on him!  She was very glad to see him.  She had been on the run for a week, but she looked very healthy.  John was delighted to have his best friend back.

I wish Tino had been able to track right up to Bella, but sometimes we have to stop the search so we don’t push a dog away.  I hope Tino understands when I tell him he is a good dog for finding the lost dog, even when he can’t walk right up to the dog.  Tino just likes to work.  It’s a game to him.  Also, he loves to do stuff with me, whatever we are doing.  He is always ready for another search.

D. D. Ponder catches hundreds of lost dogs, especially the dogs that are hardest to catch.  She mostly helps dogs in the Olympia area, but travels farther sometimes.  She has years of experience, and traps and cameras and other equipment.  She is a great resource for people who have lost their dogs.  She has even caught coyotes and an owl when they needed rescuing and rehabilitation.  If your dog is missing in Thurston County, you should definitely reach out to D. D., through the Facebook group, Lost and Found Pets Thurston County + More.  Her expert advice really helped John recover Bella.

Most people who contact Three Retrievers Lost Pet Rescue are interested in the services of the search dogs.  Sometimes I think I am Tino’s assistant.  A search dog is a wonderful resource, and Tino can be helpful in many situations.  There are many other tools and techniques for finding lost pets, and you should never rely solely on the search dog as the complete answer for finding a lost pet.  Instrumental in finding Bella was that I simply asked someone in the area if they had seen a lost dog.  This got us an invaluable tip, and probably saved us a lot of work.  Of course, I would like for Tino to find every lost dog, but it’s not always going to work out that way.  In the case of Bella, stopping the search, not catching up to Bella at that moment, was the best way to find her eventually.  I wish I could explain this to Tino.  He had fun anyway.