Sky

An excerpt from my book A Voice for The Lost

Sky

I first heard about Sky on May 9th of 2014. A volunteer for Useless Bay Sanctuary saw a Facebook post about a dog running around a cemetery. Several volunteers went to investigate, and just saw her as a shadow darting in and out of the trees. On the 10th, I went to see about her. She slept on the grass in a corner of the cemetery, near the fence of the adjacent trailer park. When she got up from her nap, I got the first pictures of her, from a distance, with a telephoto lens. She looked feral. She held her head low and scanned the horizon. She looked muscular and lean.

I set a humane trap for her, and she ran up to the trap and barked at it. It didn't belong in her cemetery. Obviously, that wasn't going to work. Next, I tried calming signals and high-value treats such as hotdogs and teriyaki chicken. Over a period of several hours, Sky (I named her Sky because of the beautiful skies over the cemetery that day) got within several feet of me. She seemed to be warming up to me, and the treats. Then a resident of the trailer park came out into the cemetery, and his presence, even two hundred feet away, was enough to spook Sky. I went over to talk to him, and he said he didn't want me to catch Sky. He didn't want her to go to a shelter and be put to sleep. I tried to explain that I wasn't animal control, that I would try to reunite her with her family first of all, and that we would place her in a good, screened home if we couldn't find her original owner. He wasn't receptive, and he was talking on the phone to another resident at the other end of the park. I was upset that someone was interfering, possibly preventing us from helping Sky, saving her life. I was having a hard time being diplomatic because I was angry. Fortunately, another volunteer, Carrie, went to talk to the other resident, and explained what we were doing, how we wanted to help Sky. We eventually got them on our side, but it was dark, and I'd been there four hours, and Sky had run off to her den in the trees, so I called it a night. It was a good thing we talked to the residents because we learned a lot about Sky. She had been living in the cemetery for at least two months, and possibly as long as four months. At one point, she had become very skinny, but lately she had been eating regular meals. The guy at the north end of the trailer park would feed Sky in the evening, and the guy at the south end fed her every morning. She had a regular schedule.

I came back again on May 13th and spent the day with Sky. She approached me cautiously at first, but within about half an hour, I gained back the level of trust I had the previous day. I ran out of cheeseburgers to lure her with, so volunteers, I believe it was Dina and Dori, went to get more. I tried various ways of making friends with Sky. Some dogs like a direct approach, but Sky responded best to the calming signals, body to the side, eyes away. I actually used my phone camera to watch her so I wouldn't be looking at her directly. The next thing I tried was to walk away from her and see if she would follow, which she did. Then we started to play a game where I would run away and she would chase me. When she caught up to me, I would fall down on the grass, and she would stand near me, panting softly. We played this game a long time, and the residents of the trailer park sat out on their porches and watched us dance. After about six hours of making friends with Sky, she finally allowed me to touch her, and then to pet her. I didn't push her, but it was such a relief to feel her fur, to know she would allow me to get close. It was the first time a human had touched her in months. As the sun went down, Sky fell asleep against my leg as I sat on the grass. She slept for about twenty minutes, and when she woke up, I gently slipped a leash over her head. She hesitated, and then she allowed it. I walked up and down the lawn with Sky on the leash, and she stayed beside me. I had Dina bring my car closer and leave the back door open. Sky walked easy with me until we approached the car, and then she stiffened. I tried to pull her toward the car, but she resisted. I could see I was undoing the trust I had spent all day building. It was a hard decision, but I decided to leave her in the cemetery that night rather than try to fight her into the car. At a volunteer's suggestion, I tossed her a squeaky toy. She was very happy and excited to have her very own squeaky toy, and she galloped off into the woods, to her den, squeaking all the way.

The next day, I brought her a roast beef sandwich and a new squeaky toy. She came up to me, wiggling and happy but a little apprehensive. She let me pet her right away, and she regained her confidence quickly. Then a simple idea dawned on me, which would have saved me a day in the cemetery, not that I minded hanging out with Sky. It occurred to me that even though I couldn't get Sky to the vet to be scanned for a microchip, I had a scanner in my car that I could bring to her. She let me scan her, with no fear or hesitation, and the scanner found a chip right away. I called Dori with the chip number, and she started researching it. Sky came from Hawaii, it turned out. It took several hours, but we were finally able to track down Sky's registered owner, who lived in Seattle. He said he would come to the cemetery right away. I told him, Don't be surprised if Sky treats you like a stranger at first.

Once I knew Sky's owner was on the way, that we would definitely be able to get her to safety that day, I just enjoyed being with her. We played with a piece of grass. She chomped at it as I waved it in the air. She sat with me on the grass, usually with her back to me, and I patted her all over. Sky chomped at the mosquitoes buzzing around me, keeping them away from me. I watched the clouds rolling slowly by, and I just spent time with Sky. I thought, This is who I want to be, this person who spends hours running around in a cemetery to help a lost dog. Like the time I held Sophie in my arms, the moment I caught smelly little Thelma, and the day Kelsy and I located Charlie in the blackberry thicket, I knew that this experience with Sky, just sitting on the grass in the cemetery, waiting for her owner to come, was a moment that I would always have, that I could say, This is who I am. I thanked Sky for giving me that memory and letting me be the person I wanted to be.

When Travis got to the cemetery, he called to Sky by the name he'd given her as a puppy, Zoey. She ran from him. He was disappointed, obviously, but I sat with him and told him about calming signals. It took a couple of hours for Sky/Zoey to let Travis pet her. While we waited patiently, Travis told me Zoey's story. She was a Shar Pei-Rottweiler mix, and Travis got her as a puppy in Hawaii. She was trained to do many tricks, and she liked to go on hikes with him. When Travis went overseas for military service, he left Zoey with someone he trusted. They gave Zoey away to someone without his permission. It was that unknown third party who lost Zoey. She was about three years old. Eventually, Zoey rolled over for Travis and let him rub her belly. Travis explained that he was living in an apartment that didn't allow dogs. I told him Useless Bay Sanctuary would be happy to place Zoey in a new home if he would surrender her to us. Travis was so glad to have his dog back, but he knew an apartment was not a good place for her, even if she was allowed. He agreed to surrender Zoey. All we had to do was get her in the car. Travis explained that she never liked getting in the car; it wasn't just because I was a stranger. We put a leash on her, and Travis walked her up to his car, a car she had gotten into many times before. Sky/Zoey hesitated at the door of the car, so I gently scooped her up and placed her in. She didn't struggle, even though she didn't like it. Travis transported her to a foster home.

Please watch a video of Sky's capture.

Sky stayed at the first foster home for about a month. Then she attacked an older dog in the home when food fell on the floor. Sky was not the same as she had been before her time in the cemetery. She had issues with resource guarding, understandably, and she also went out-of-her-mind crazy when she saw a squirrel. She nearly scaled the fence several times, and had to be kept on a leash in the fenced yard. Sky went to a different foster home in hopes that she would get along better. She did not. She got in another squabble over food on the floor. So, Sky came to live with us. When I brought her home, I was very tired. I thought about ways to do the introductions properly--giving everyone time to warm up and meeting each dog one at a time--but I just walked in the front door with her and said, "This is Sky, she's staying here a while, and I don't want any trouble." Surprisingly enough, the other dogs left her alone, and we didn't have any problems. At first, anyway. I tried to be careful not to have food on the ground they could fight over, but I did end up having to break up a few noisy squabbles. It didn't take long for Sky, supposedly a foster, to become My Sky.

Sky learned to play with the other dogs, gradually, and she slept in the bed with all of us. I fed her separately to avoid drama. I've had Sky over a year, now, and she is showing some gradual changes. Now, she will look at my face, and actually engage with me, asking for attention or play. This took many months, as she tended to avoid eye contact with me at first. When she first started playing with Komu and Fozzie, I was nervous it would get out of hand. Now she plays with all the dogs very nicely. Sky still gets freaked out if a car drives past us while we are out walking, and she still goes crazy for squirrels. I am trying to calm her down in these situations, without much success so far.

About nine months after I got Sky, I took her to the beach, where we regularly go for our walks. She saw two ducks, paddling around in Puget Sound near the shore, and Sky just went crazy. I thought I had a good grip on the leash, but she lunged harder than she ever had before, and ripped the leash out of my hand. I thought, that's okay, I can walk the beach faster than she can swim, and I'll just catch her when she comes out. Well, the ducks paddled effortlessly ahead of her, and she would not stop swimming after them, no matter what. I remembered a story I was told when I was young, about a dog who swam way out into Puget Sound, chasing birds, and was never seen again, presumably drowned. I decided to wade into the cold water to catch Sky. I might have caught her, but she swam past the bulkheads to the south, and the high tide left no beach to walk on. I grabbed some rocks to throw at the ducks, and I finally got them to fly away. Still, Sky kept swimming south. I waded in with the water up to my chest. My wallet and all my gear in my jacket pockets got wet, but I held my iPhone above the waves. Sky came close enough so that I could grab her leash after about half a mile of wading through the cold water. By that time, it seemed that it might be easier to continue south than to try to go back north. I walked along on the gravel beach, the water sometimes thigh high, sometimes up to my chest. It was kind of nice, in a way, to be walking along the beach on a clear, cold, sunny day, with my dog swimming beside me. If I hadn't been freezing,

It turned out that heading south was not the easy way out. I consulted the map on my iPhone and saw that one house on the beach had a driveway that came almost all the way to the beach and led up to the nearest road. I thought no one would catch me trespassing if I snuck through their yard. Of course, the homeowner happened to be out in the yard, behind a boat. When she heard the gate creak and peeked around the boat at me, I explained how my dog had gone into the water and I had to wade in after her. The homeowner took pity on us and let me scurry through her yard. We walked a mile home along the roads. Walking in wet pants is significantly harder than walking in dry pants, I discovered. Also, Sky had to freak out at every car that passed. It was a very long mile. But I got my Sky back, which was the important thing.

I love having Sky, and she fits into our family perfectly. Her issues are manageable, and hopefully improving. One great thing about Sky is that she will focus on one thing and ignore anything else, which enables me to put stuff on her head for pictures. As long as I hold a cookie in front of her, she really doesn't mind if I put flowers and leaves and shells on her head. She is a beautiful, sweet girl. I don't think she will ever make a good search dog. She has an excellent nose and great drive, but she would be thrown off the first time she saw a squirrel. Her job will be just to look beautiful.

A Voice for The Lost