June and Melvin

Catching a dog with a dog.

June and Melvin

June and Melvin found themselves at the shelter, through no fault of their own.  The puppies, Plott hounds about 7 months old were not doing well.  A volunteer had to carry them outside to get them to go to the bathroom.  In their kennel, Melvin would curl up and hide behind June. Melvin was adopted first, and then June was adopted soon after.  On the day June was adopted by Erica, they went to a park near Erica’s home.  June’s collar was on fairly tight, but apparently not tight enough.  Someone approached with a dog.  Erica saw that June was nervous, and asked them to stay away.  When the dog kept approaching, June backed out of her collar and fled into the bushes near a fence.  They thought they had the puppy cornered, but she squeezed by and ran off.

Erica called Three Retrievers soon after the escape, and I said I could bring the search dog the next day.  Before we could come out to start the search, Erica called to say there had been a sighting of June, not far from the point of escape.  I arrived with the trap and the search dog a couple of hours later.  I set the trap behind a church, not far from the park where June had escaped. As I was setting up the trap, I heard a dog howling or baying, or something in between howling and baying.  I thought it was a dog in a yard nearby.  After a while, I realized the baying was coming from different places, and not localized to one yard.  I asked Erica if the baying could be June, and she said she didn’t know because she had never heard June say anything.  I stood on a hill overlooking the back acreage of the church, and eventually I located the source of the baying, a dark mass on the far side of a fence for a storm water pond.  I used my phone to zoom in and shoot a video, and it did appear to be June.

It seemed that June was somewhat contained between two fences.  I had the idea of putting the trap at the gap between the two fences, and once it was ready, we could go in from the other side and ease her towards the trap.  Erica talked to a nearby property owner, telling him of our plan.  He didn’t listen to everything Erica was saying, and he immediately went over to where June was hiding and said, “Here, doggie, doggie....” As if we were idiots who didn’t know how to get a dog.  When I called to him to stop, because I didn’t want him to chase June out of her safe spot, the man became angry at me, saying he was just trying to help. I tried to explain that I didn’t mean to be rude, but we had a plan in place.  By the time the man finally left, June had run off.

Fortunately, June bayed again, and we could tell she was on a large vacant property to the north.  Since she had left her comfort zone momentarily, I took the opportunity to move the trap back to its original position in the grassy field behind the church.  I felt confident June would come back to her safe space once she thought the coast was clear.

A volunteer from the shelter, Pam, was there helping us.  She had been one of the people helping the puppies at the shelter.  She had become attached to them and wanted to help find June.  I suggested to Pam that the shelter could call the people who adopted Melvin, and ask them to bring Melvin to the location in Tacoma to work as a magnet.  At first, the shelter said they couldn’t give out the personal information of the people who adopted Melvin.  I asked Pam to tell them that we didn’t want their personal info, but just to have them call us in order to help recover Melvin’s sister.  After about an hour, they did call, and they agreed to help.

After a couple of hours, Melvin arrived.  He was doing much better than he had in the shelter, and he was warming up to his new family.  It turned out that Melvin had also backed out of his collar on his first day with his new family, but the new owner managed to grab him before he ran off.  They were anxious to help recover June because they had had the momentary panic of almost losing Melvin.  We set up a crate beside the humane trap, and we put Melvin in.  We backed off and waited.

It took about 15 minutes, but eventually Melvin bayed because he had been left alone in the crate.  When June heard her brother, she answered.  At 6:52 PM, I caught June on video, working her way closer to the humane trap and the crate that held her brother.  Over the next 38 minutes, June paced back and forth, checking out her brother and assessing the situation.  She came and sat beside the door of his crate and they visited through the bars.  Once June relaxed, she actually danced around in the grass with a playful gallop.  Reunited with her brother, her attention turned to the food in the trap.  It didn’t take long for her to go in, and when the door came down behind her, she didn’t seem upset at all.  She hardly even flinched.

The families of June and Melvin walked up to the trap after I signaled to them that June was trapped.  They got Melvin out of his crate and carried him back to his car.  Then we carried June, inside the trap, and put the trap into Erica’s car.  We drove the couple of blocks to Erica’s house, where she drove her car into the garage, and we opened the trap only after June was safely enclose.  June explored the new house cautiously.

I explained to Erica how to set up June with a collar and harness, so she could be walked with two leashes, at least until she became accustomed to her new home.  I sent her a text message with a link to our article on loss prevention, which she shared with the owners of Melvin as well.  Pamela said she would ask the shelter to give this loss prevention information to everyone who adopts a dog from the shelter.

Without the aid of an experienced trapper, catching June would have been very difficult.  It is possible that, using the typical techniques people often try, June could have been pushed out of the area and maybe she never would have been found.  Using proven methods of trapping, including using Melvin as a magnet dog, allowed us to catch June relatively quickly, and with the least amount of panic and trauma for her.  June is on her way to a wonderful life, and her family will take her for play dates with her brother regularly.