Princess

Caught after two weeks and hundreds of miles.

Today is Valentine’s Day, or Valentino’s day as I call it. I had thought about writing about Valentino, how I love him as a friend, a son, a working partner, and a majestic creature. However, I have already written at least a couple dozen articles featuring Tino’s adventures or just trying to explain how much he means to me. I think people get the idea, by now, that I’m a little bit crazy about the boy. Tino has hit a statistical rough patch in the first six weeks of 2025. Over the course of his 6 years as a working dog, he has found the lost dog 25% of the time, but in the first 6 weeks of this year, he is one for eight. I know he will have many walk up finds in the years to come, but I always feel bad when he is prevented from finding the lost dog. It is usually something outside of our control, such as hitting private property, or water. Sometimes a dog is like Princess, and simply travels farther and faster than we can track by scent. Occasionally, a scent trail might be complex, with dead ends and backtracking, and we just can’t sort it out. I know he has proven skills, and drive. I want him to find the lost dog for the sake of the lost dog, for the dog’s family, of course, and also because I want him to have the reward, the success. If Tino never searched at all, I would still love him just as much. Because our work together is a major focus of both our lives, I want him to have as much success as possible.

When we were asked to search for Princess, a young pit bull who had only been with her new family a week, I thought we had a good chance of success. I wanted to find Princess to help her be safe, naturally, and also to give Tino a win. She escaped when she backed out of her collar on January 29th. There had been multiple sightings of her, often running fast. We started where she had been seen going into a ravine, and we tracked her down through the Seola neighborhood, to where it appeared she had gone to the beach. It was high tide, and we couldn’t follow. Then we got a new sighting where it seemed she had come up off the beach and circled around. We were able to track her from Fauntleroy Park to Westwood Village, but we lost the scent trail. I don’t know why. I think she may have been hiding on private property. Also, it appears to be the local custom, around Westwood Village, that you buy chicken at one of the local restaurants, and then you toss chicken bones into the landscape, everywhere. It was quite a distraction for Tino. We didn’t catch up to Princess that night, but I felt confident there would be new sightings of her.

Princess was sighted frequently, and she covered a lot of territory. She started near West Seattle High School, on the 29th. By the time we caught her, on February 13th, she had traveled to White Center, Seahurst, Top Hat, Normandy Park, Des Moines, Three Tree Point, and Shorewood. She covered 36 square miles in two weeks. She must have travelled hundreds of miles when you consider all of the loops and backtracking. She appears to have travelled through the woods of Seahurst Park, Salmon Creek Ravine, Lincoln Park, Fauntleroy Park, probably Walker Creek Preserve, and many unnamed ravines. She used the beach to get north and south, and avoid people. Princess toured a tiny homes village and darted through the yards of luxury homes with 270 degree views of the Sound and Rainier and the Olympics, and swimming pools with infinity edges. She may have been terrified at times, and she probably didn’t keep a travel diary or collect souvenirs.

On February 6th, she was reportedly seen in Seahurst Park, right in the middle, where the footbridge crosses the nameless creek. Because this is close to my home, and I am familiar with every inch of Seahurst Park, I went there with Tino to see if we could find Princess. Her owner did not have any of the scent items with him at the moment, so Tino and I just walked down to the creek to see if we could spot her, or if Tino happened to come upon a familiar scent. After we had gone all the way from the top of the park to the beach, the owner of Princess said someone had arrived with the scent items. I presented them to Tino, and he caught the fresh scent going from the creek to the beach, and on northward. After about a quarter mile, we had to stop because we hit private beaches. Other searchers went to that area of Shorewood and looked around. She had been seen there, but no one could catch up to her.

On several days, when we didn’t have other searches scheduled, Tino and I just drove around the areas where Princess had been seen. Tino is very good at finding dogs visually, from the car. I will be driving along, not noticing anything, and then I see, out of the corner of my eye, that Tino is interested in something, so I follow his gaze to see what has interested him. Often it is a cat or a rabbit, or a dog on a leash. Every once in a while, he spots the missing dog. We drove many miles around in overlapping circles, hoping for a glimpse of Princess.

Tino and I searched for Princess, by scent, a third time on Sunday, February 9th. We tracked her into a ravine, and back out. Then we received a reported sighting many blocks away, so we returned to our car to look for her visually. A dog that moves as fast as Princess is difficult to track by scent. We had a humane trap in the car, if only she would settle down in someone’s yard.

The first time I tried to deploy the trap was a couple of days ago. I got a text that she was seen in Gregory Heights, near where we had tracked her a couple of days prior. The sightings came in through the text message group as I tried to catch up to them. She ran north on 21st and then south on Maplewild, a winding road that provides access to all of the waterfront homes near Three Tree Point. I caught up to a parade of cars going south at about 15 miles an hour. I believe there were at least 8 cars behind the Jeep of the owner of Princess. I needed to get up to the front and get ahead so I could jump out and set up the trap. I knew I was going to get honked at because people would assume I was an impatient jerk. I stepped over the line and started passing cars, and a few people did honk at me. I passed Princess, trotting along Maplewild, and got ahead of her about a block. I just barely got the trap set, and hadn’t put the food in yet, when she blew right past me. I had miscalculated the amount of runway needed. On previous captures, I had been successful in setting the trap in front of a dog on the run. I caught Viktor that way, and also the dog who had run from Canada, 60 miles south into Washington. It didn’t work this time, and I loaded it back in the car.

Many people were driving around looking for Princess, and we got a report of her running west on 172nd, towards Three Tree Point. This time, I got ahead of Princess and her parade of vehicles, and I tried to set up the trap two blocks ahead of her. Still, she cruised right past me without really even noticing the trap. Then we lost track of her when she cut through a yard to get to the next street, stranding the cars.

Yesterday, we got new sightings in the same area, at the ravine that Tino had tracked her into previously, between Gregory Heights and Three Tree Point. It was after dark, so I didn’t want to try to track her into the heavily wooded ravine in the dark. We drove around looking for two hours. Stephanie Seek had her infrared drone searching from above, and I hoped she would spot Princess and direct us to her. After a couple of hours of not finding her, we went home for a break. I had only been home about 15 minutes when there was a new sighting in Shorewood, several miles north of the sightings earlier in the evening. A Good Samaritan was following Princess and keeping track of her as she went south past Salmon Creek Ravine. I caught up to them in time to see Princess turn up into what looked like a driveway. I thought we had a good chance of catching her in the humane trap because she had gone up a dead end, and would be coming back. Stephanie got her drone up, and was trying to see Princess. I set up the trap on the edge of the narrow road.

I had thought it was a dead end, because one map showed that it was. Another navigation app showed that actually it was connected to the streets on the other side through a narrow, winding road. It looked like a driveway, but was actually a through street. I worried that Princess had blown through that neighborhood and she could already be south as far as Seahurst Park and beyond. She was moving so fast. I looked around for her on the south side of the little through street. I couldn’t find her, and Stephanie hadn’t spotted her with the drone. I went back to where the trap was set to pack it up and call it a night. Just as I was getting out to close the trap, Princess came down the hill toward the trap! She saw me, but I quickly closed my door and backed away. She looked like she was going to dart past my car. Then, she got the scent of the Vienna sausage in and around the trap. I saw that she was interested.

I backed out to the main road and parked my car. I texted to the group that she was near the trap. My heart was suddenly racing because we were so close to catching her after two weeks on the run. I was fumbling in my pocket for one of my flashlights so I could shine it towards the trap and see if she was still near it. Then I heard the distinctive sound of the trap door banging shut, and I knew she was trapped. I turned on my headlights and pulled into the side street, and there was Princess, in the trap, finally. I texted the group that she was trapped.

I got out and sat next to the trap, with my back to Princess, to help her relax. She looked to be in good condition considering she had been on the run for two weeks, probably covering hundreds of miles. The other people in the search party began to show up, and her owner. He was so relieved to see she was caught. We loaded the trap into his van so he could take her home. Then I let Tino out of the car. It is his job, after we catch a dog in a trap, to go around and sniff out any bits of Vienna sausage that fall out of a trap. He vacuums up any sausage bits and leaves the ground pristine. Tino didn’t get to find Princess with his nose, but at least he got to clean up the sausage pieces she left behind.

Even though Tino and I never caught up to Princess during our three attempts to track her scent, we were able to at least reveal where she was going, how she was getting around, and which direction she was last heading. Princess had been acting much like Viktor, who ran for five weeks before we caught him the first time and seven days before we caught him the second time. I had a good feeling that we would be able to catch Princess eventually. Her new family never gave up on her, and dozens of people helped look for her. Princess only lost three pounds during her two weeks on the run. She must have been finding food sources. She is a clever girl and knows how to survive. Hopefully she is smart enough to realize that she is in a home where the family loves her, and she won’t try to escape again. Happy Valentino’s Day, Princess.