Rusty Saves Dianna

Rusty Saves Dianna

Rusty saved the life of Dianna last week.  Dianna Printz is the name I gave the stray dog, after Wonder Woman, because of her beauty and strength.  She had been running around right next to the freeway, running from Costco to Home Depot to Taco Time to the Chevrolet dealer, and through a woodsy vacant lot in between.  At least two people reported that they nearly hit her with their cars.  There were two freeway entrances within ten blocks, and many gaps in the fence in that area.  I went there to try to help her on the first day I learned of her.  At that time, I read that an animal control officer was trying to catch the dog, so I felt a greater sense of urgency to try to help her first.  There are situations where an animal control officer can definitely help a dog, and there are times when the typical actions of an ACO are likely to make a situation worse.  One animal control officer for that area told me that the way he deals with stray dogs is to “...throw rocks at them and tell them to go home.”  While I didn’t  know if he was going to be the one responding to this situation, I do know that not many citizens or professionals take the proper approach when a frightened dog is running in panic near a freeway.  I knew this was a job for Rusty.  I had Valentino with me, but mostly for company.  This would be a situation where Rusty’s talents would be more valuable.

Rusty is a Tru Catch 48 F, a type of humane trap.  Rusty has saved more lives than all of my search dogs combined.  In fact, he saved the lives of two of my search dogs, Fozzie and Tino.  Fozzie was running around on the freeway when someone told me about him.  Mu and Rusty and I went looking for him, and we saw the dirty little white poodle under the freeway, where he would have an easy path to run right back up the slope and  onto the freeway if he was spooked. Dogs run toward freeways because humans typically won’t continue the pursuit onto the freeway.  It was a location where I had picked up the remains of deceased cats and dogs from the shoulder of that particular section of freeway in the past.  I set the trap for Fozzie and within ten minutes he went in and was trapped, safe.  Near a freeway, you really don’t want to take any chances.  It’s best to get the dog safely and quickly, with a technique that has a high probability of success and safety.  Tino’s mother, Salma was up in the mountains running around right near I-90.  People saw her in the area, but couldn’t get her to come to them, so they contacted Useless Bay Sanctuary.  I drove the 90 minutes to get there, and saw her within 20 minutes of looking.  I set the trap, and she went in within ten minutes, with no chance of her getting spooked and dashing into trouble.  I brought her home to foster her while I searched for anyone claiming to be her owner.  Valentino was born the next day.  The odds of a young, frightened German Shepherd and her puppy surviving in the woods near a freeway would not have been too high.

I brought Rusty home in August of 2012, and since then, he has captured hundreds of dogs, many of them close to a freeway.  Rusty is a folding trap, which makes him very portable and convenient, folding up into kind of a long suitcase.  When set up, the trap is 48 inches long, 28 inches high, and 20 inches wide, big enough for a not-too-big German Shepherd, but also able to catch an 11 pound poodle mix.  Just a couple of weeks ago, I caught a 3 pound chihuahua in this trap by adding weight to the trigger plate to make enough weight so the little dog could trip it.  The trap works when the dog goes in to get the food in the back, and then steps on the pressure plate, causing a lever to rotate and allowing the door to swing closed.  It all works by gravity, and it is a very robust and reliable design.  After 9 years of hard work, rough treatment, and being left out in the weather, Rusty is a bit oxidized, but still working just fine.

When I saw Dianna on the first night, running through the dark parking lot.  I jumped out of my car with a can of Spam, and let her see me placing food on the ground.  (I don’t recommend feeding Spam to dogs, but it is handy to keep in a glovebox, never goes bad, and lures dogs reliably.) She hesitated like she might come to me, and then ran off toward the Taco Time.  I looked around for her for a while, to try to learn her patterns.  Someone at Costco said they had been feeding her at the Home Depot since midday.  I had to go home, and planned to come back the next day with Rusty.

On Thursday, the second day of trying to catch her, I learned of her pathways in between the businesses.  There was a vacant lot that was closed off with barbed wire, and you could see that people had cut the barbed wire in many places, and had camped in the woods there.  I set the trap in the edge of the vacant lot, between Home Depot and Taco Time.  Mu & I had to go to Mossyrock to search for a cat, so Diane, a UBS volunteer, said she would check the trap while we were gone.  We got back in the evening and the food in the trap hadn’t been touched.  We looked around for a while, and then we took Rusty home for the night to keep him safe.

On Friday, Tino and Rusty and I went to look again.  I saw Dianna in the back of the Chevrolet lot, for just a moment, and then she vanished.  I figured she had many escape routes and probably was going into the wild vacant lot between the businesses.  I left Tino and Rusty in the car, and went exploring the woods between the freeway and the businesses, being careful not to spook Dianna if I encountered her.  I found a creek flowing through the woods, parallel to the freeway, which would have attracted her as a water source in the middle of all that asphalt and concrete.  Itinerant humans had made a network of trails on both sides of the creek.  While I didn’t find anyone living there at that time, I found plenty of evidence that people had set up camp there not too long ago.  Had Dianna belonged to a homeless person who had to go to a hospital or something?  I came back to the car and drove between the points where Dianna had been seen, and soon found her in one of her favorite spots behind the shipping containers between the hardware store and the Taco Time.  I set up Rusty in less than a minute and parked 100 feet away to watch.  Dianna did go partway into the trap, but she kept two feet out the door.  Also, she didn’t eat much of the bait, possibly because others were feeding her.

I went home to take care of my dogs and came back after the stores were closed, thinking things would be quieter, and she would be more likely to go in.  Well, it turned out there was a colony of feral cats in the area, and they kept stealing the food out of the trap.  Also, one employee of the Home Depot decided that that was the night he simply had to rearrange the piles of junk in the area, moving them from one spot to another with a beeping forklift.  Did his boss tell him, “Hey, I suddenly decided that that corner of the parking lot full of stuff that hasn’t been touched in months should be randomly rearranged so all of the junk is still there, but in a different order”?  That seems unlikely.  I got the impression that he was deliberately making a bunch of noise to prevent Dianna from coming around and going into the trap.  This could happen for a few possible reasons.  Some people think trapping a dog somehow hurts them.  I have trapped over a thousand cats and dogs, with only two very minor injuries to a couple of cats.  Any cat or dog is much safer being trapped than running around among traffic and predators.  Another reason some people don’t want us to trap a dog is that they think we will take the dog to be euthanized.  That is never my goal.  Almost every dog or cat I’ve caught has ended up reunited with their family or in a new forever home.  There were just a couple of dogs the shelter deemed too aggressive to be adopted.  A third reason this individual may have been trying to thwart the trapping process could have been that he wanted to catch the dog for himself.  It’s also possible that it really was his job to hop on forklift and randomly shuffle piles of unwanted materials in the dark, but that seems the least likely.  Since Mr. Forklift seemed intent on banging stuff around all night, I finally just picked up Rusty and headed home for the night.

The next day, we learned that several employees at the Chevy lot had been feeding Dianna, and she had made a little nest under a flatbed trailer, with a blanket they put out for her.  With their permission, I drove in to set up the trap at the back edge of the lot, right up against the jersey barrier for the freeway, near her nest.  I saw Dianna right away.  When she wandered north toward the Taco Time, I set up the trap.  Then I drove around to watch where she was going and try to keep her safe.  A couple in a pickup had seen her and went towards her to try to help, and she used one of her escape routes into the woodsy lot.  I saw her after that, over by Costco, so I drove back to the Chevy lot to sit and wait with Tino and Rusty.  Before long, she came trotting back to her little home under the flatbed truck, and she smelled the hotdogs in the trap.  She looked around, circled the trap once, and then walked right in.  When she stepped on the trigger plate, the door fell down behind her.  She jumped a little, startled, but then she just sat down, calm, waiting for whatever was next.

Going in the trap.

I went to the trap and sat beside her, using Calming Signals to try to help her relax.  Up close, her eyes were just stunning.  The pictures I took of her do not do her justice.  She is much more beautiful in person.  I loaded her up, still inside the trap, into the back of the Prius, and drove her to Diane’s house where she has an outdoor kennel we sometimes use to hold dogs overnight before taking them to the shelter or to a foster home.  I carried the trap into the kennel and opened it up, and then I sat down on the ground with my back against the chain link.  She came to see me and be petted.  If I ever stopped petting her, she nudged my hand so I would keep going.  I sat in the dark with her a long time.  When I finally had to go home, she barked and howled as I was leaving, as if I was her person, as if I ought to be her forever home.  I certainly would have liked that.  I want to keep every dog I save, but our house is full.

I should have been keeping a spreadsheet of all of the lives Rusty has saved.  I know Kelsy saved at least 100 dogs in her 8 year career, Mu has saved hundreds of cat lives.  Fozzie probably saved at least a couple of dozen lost dogs, and Tino has saved at least a couple of dozen lives so far.  I’m certain Rusty has saved more than all of them put together.  He works quietly and efficiently.  He may not be charismatic or photogenic, but he gets the job done. Maybe he’s not the best conversationalist, and he doesn’t sleep in the bed with all of the dogs and me, but he is low-maintenance, rugged, and reliable.  A humane trap, used properly, is a much easier way than trying to catch a dog or get her to come to you, usually.  I am as skilled and as practiced at Calming Signals as anyone I know.  If I have time and the conditions are right, I’m perfectly happy to take the time using Calming Signals to catch a dog.  Near a busy freeway, where people with good intentions were approaching her and making her run, the trap was definitely the way to go for Dianna.  If someone was looking for the easiest, safest way to help the most lost dogs, buying a Tru Catch 48 F trap would be your best investment.  Don’t name your trap Rusty, though, because that name is already taken.

As of this writing, Dianna is still at the Tacoma Humane Society.  Please contact them about adopting her if she is not claimed by her previous owner.