The Day I Dumped Two Dogs

A horrible feeling.

The Day I Dumped Two Dogs

Susan and I parked our vehicles in the dead end, and got the black and tan shepherd out of her SUV. We planned to race away before the two dogs could follow us. Just as Susan hit the gas, the black and tan shepherd ran in front of her car, circling frantically, so she had to slam on the brakes. I couldn’t see the black shepherd in the darkness, but I knew he was nearby, getting ready to chase after us. When our path was clear, Susan and I both raced down the hill about 50 miles an hour, and then around the corner, out of sight. We both felt terrible, but we didn’t know what else to do.

—

A couple of days earlier, Tino and I went to investigate a report of a “huge” black German Shepherd at Snoqualmie Pointe Park. People described the dog as a dog/bear hybrid. Some people said they may have seen a second dog. It was a beautiful day when Tino and I arrived at the viewpoint, looking out at Mount Si on the other side of the Snoqualmie River. I walked Tino around and just looked for the reported dogs. Tino looked down a deer trail, like he was smelling something, and he looked at me. It seemed to be a question. “Should I follow this scent?” I nodded and gave him slack on the leash. He took me down to the north, through dense brush, and sometimes on a primitive trail. He was definitely on the track of something. I hadn’t presented a scent item to him. Also, it was warmer than ideal for searching, and he didn’t even have his search vest on. Tino stayed on the scent for about a mile, and then he looked up at something moving in the distance. I could just barely see a black and tan shepherd going through the ferns, circling around to avoid us and head back up to the viewpoint. In a minute, I saw the black shepherd following behind. Tino had found the stray dogs!

I was very impressed with Tino. I wasn’t surprised that he could follow a scent, because he has found at least 70 lost dogs in his career. The amazing part was that I hadn’t even specified what he should look for. It was like I had an image in my mind of a black German Shepherd, and then Tino tracked one for a mile and found it! We stopped trying to follow the scent after that because the dogs were headed back to the park. I felt confident they would return to where they had been seen before. At least we were able to confirm there was a second dog, and what it looked like. We just enjoyed the forest as we casually made our way back up the hill on the easiest route I could find. I had a can of Vienna sausage in my pocket that I had been planning to lure the stray dogs with, but I gave the sausage to Tino as his reward for such a remarkable search, finding the dogs I wanted to find when I hadn’t even been able to tell him what to look for! We saw lots of trilliums in bloom, and I took a nice picture of Tino. He found a nice mud hole to wallow in.

I was fairly sure the two dogs would return to the place where they had been reportedly seen because dogs who are dumped usually return to the spot where they last saw their human. Dogs seem to not understand the deep cruelty of some humans, and the dumped dogs usually wait patiently for their people to come back because surely this all must be some sort of misunderstanding. When dogs keep returning to a particular spot on a road when there are no nearby houses, this is behavioral evidence that they have been dumped from a car. Three years earlier, UBS volunteers had spent three days rounding up four puppies that had apparently been dumped just a quarter mile away from where these dogs were seen. The location is near a freeway entrance, and far from any houses, so mean people can abandon dogs and drive away without being seen, and get far away fast on the freeway. Those four puppies, Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael all found great homes, and Raphael works as my cat detection dog, having found about 20 cats so far in his career.

We returned to where we had parked, and I gave Tino some water and put him in the car. I looked around the parking area for the two dogs, and within an hour, I saw the black one. I approached with calming signals and a can of Vienna sausage, and he didn’t seem too worried. He was not a giant bear dog hybrid, as had been reported. Just average size, and smaller than Tino. I think people who saw him were startled and he grew larger in their imaginations. I was able to sit down and get him to come close enough to me, eventually, to eat out of my hand. He was stunningly beautiful, and relatively friendly. He didn’t want me to touch him, though. I set up the 48 inch trap. He checked it out, but didn’t want to go in. I decided to take the trap away for the night, and come back the next day with two traps, and hopefully more volunteers. I set up the wildlife camera before we left. Overnight, the wildlife camera captured both dogs going in and out of the woods. It showed that the black and tan had a long leash or rope attached to the collar. We worried about the rope getting caught on something and possibly choking the dog.

The next day, Judy, Susan, Sarah, Dorie, and Stephanie helped try to catch the two dogs. They set two traps side by side. Judy set a wildlife camera to watch the traps. I didn’t get there until the evening, about 6 PM. The black dog seemed to be the adventurous one, and the black and tan stayed deeper in the woods most of the time. When the black dog barked at something in the distance, the black and tan would join in the barking, but from a spot 100 feet northwest, out of sight. I became worried about the rope, imagining that the black and tan dog was stuck somewhere. We asked Stephanie to come out with her drone, so she could look at the other dog and see if it was stuck. It was getting dark when she was just starting her drone and getting ready to take off. Then we heard the distinctive clang of a trap door shutting! We had caught one! I assumed it would be the black dog, since he was usually the first to do anything. When I walked towards the traps, I was surprised to see the black dog outside the traps, looking at me. We had caught the shy dog, the one that I thought was going to be the most difficult to catch. After not being around much all day, she appeared and walked right into the nearest trap.

The black dog calmed down when he realized it was me coming towards the traps. He warmed up to me again fairly quickly. He took treats from me, and we played fetch with a ball. He seemed to like me, and he would try to protect me and the other dog from the coyotes in the distance, barking them away. I had become part of his pack. Susan also was able to be close to him. I could pet the black and tan dog through the gap under the door of the trap. She didn’t seem upset about being trapped. I tried to coax the black dog into the trap for at least an hour. Then we all returned to our cars and left the two dogs alone, hoping the black dog would go in the second trap to be near his friend, and to get the food. Susan had to get up early the next day, so we decided to give up on catching the black dog for that day, and come back for him later. Sarah had a cart in her truck, and we used it to get the black and tan dog down the hill to the parking lot so we could load the trap, with the dog inside, into the back of Susan’s vehicle. The black dog was very interested, and we hoped he might jump in, to be with his friend.

We spent hours trying to get the black dog into a vehicle. We played fetch with him. We fed him a ton of chicken. I climbed into the back of the SUV to show him it was okay. I kind of doubted it would work, but I brought Tino out of the car so he could jump into the back of Susan’s SUV for chicken, possibly making the black dog jealous enough to hop in. From about 10 PM to midnight, we tried to get the black dog into the trap beside his partner. From midnight to about 2:30, we tried to get the black dog into a vehicle, to be with his friend. Then we decided to just leave, because we were all exhausted. Also, police had come by twice to tell us we weren’t supposed to be in the park after dark. We told them we were trying to catch the second dog, and they didn’t make us leave. But we couldn’t stay all night, and we made the hard decision to leave one behind.

Then, the problem was that he was chasing after the vehicle that contained his partner. I’m guessing this was his sibling, or possibly the mother of his babies, or both. We couldn’t get him to stay. I discussed with Susan the possibility of leaving both dogs. In 17 years of helping lost dogs, I have never captured a stray and then deliberately released it into the wild. It felt wrong, but I couldn’t see what choice we had. The black dog seemed intent to follow us and he would run right onto the freeway, and most likely die. As I was trying to think of the right way to handle this unusual situation, I was very tired, as was Susan.

Stephanie Seek took this amazing, poetic picture, which captured the plight of the black dog. On the left, we see Susan and I think Dorie, looking forward, ignoring the black dog, to help him feel comfortable getting in. In the middle of the picture is the black dog in red light, looking in at his friend, but unable to overcome his anxiety and make the jump. On the right, the starry night and midnight blue sky, and the open wilderness, which is not a bad place to hang out when volunteers arrive with rotisserie chicken and water on a regular schedule. Red, white, and blue.

I tried to think of anything in my past experience that would help us decide the best path forward. Or the least bad option. We had been forced into a hard decision. We were just trying to help these dogs and do what was best for them. I remembered catching Sky in the cemetery, over a decade earlier. I had earned her trust, and I was able to put a leash on her, but she panicked when I tried to put her in a vehicle. I decided to let her loose, and come back the next day to keep earning her trust. I did catch her the next day, and she has been with me ever since. It was a little different with Sky because she had been living in the cemetery for months before I learned of her, and she was very likely to stay in the place she considered home. It was a huge risk to just leave these two dogs in this park in the middle of nowhere, where it seemed they were dumped, and hope they would stay there. And stay safe. Also, if they were just dumped, it seemed especially cruel to do it to them a second time. I just couldn’t see another way.

Susan and I drove our vehicles back up to the top of the hill. When I let the black and tan dog out of the trap, to set her free, I scanned her for a microchip, hoping against all odds that we could find some information to help us help them, but of course there was no chip detected. She let me pet her, and she willingly jumped back into the car when we made one last attempt to get the black one in. She seemed to trust us. I took the rope off of her collar. I tried to take the choke chain off, but it wouldn’t fit over her head. Apparently she had had the choke chain on since she was a puppy, and she had grown to the point where it was nearly digging into her neck. The metal collar would need to be cut off after we caught her again. The black dog also liked being with us, and playing with the ball, but he just couldn’t quite make himself jump in a vehicle or go in a trap.

After we dumped them and made our getaway, at 3 AM, I drove home with Tino, exhausted, and feeling like the worst sort of person, like we had let these dogs down. I was leaving them with the intention of coming back for them the next day, and sadness that we couldn’t help them that night. I couldn’t imagine what sort of soulless person would dump these dogs there on purpose, intending never to see them again, leaving them to die in the wilderness. I was relieved to see that they both showed up on the wildlife camera after we left, and they seemed to be sticking to their familiar areas.

When I woke up later in the morning, I was so happy to see that Dorie was with the black dog, feeding him. The black and tan showed up later. I saw an image from the wildlife camera showing the black dog just sitting by the water bowl while a robin was on the lawn nearby, keeping him company. It gave me the idea to call the dogs Batman and Robin, since the black dog was the definite leader and the black and tan was his sidekick. The rest of the volunteers seemed to agree that the names suited them. Stephanie played with Batman with a squeaky toy, and he looked genuinely happy and relaxed.

Al drove his truck to Kari’s house, where the large trap was stored, to bring it to Snoqualmie. I had other commitments that day and couldn’t help much. Susan, Dorie, Sarah, Judy, and Stephanie set up the kennel trap in the parking lot. This trap is 10 feet long, six feet tall, and five feet wide. It is used to catch dogs that won’t go into the regular 48 inch humane trap. It is very effective, and we might use it every time if it weren’t so inconvenient to transport and set up. When I arrived in the afternoon, the trap was set and baited with chicken, and Batman was wandering around the parking lot, visiting his new friends. He almost went in the kennel trap, but his foot hit the crossbar in the bottom of the gate, and he kind of startled himself. I played fetch with Batman for a bit, and then I had to leave.

Batman seemed to be having a great time not going in the trap. He was visiting everyone and getting treats. He even took a nap right next to Susan. Later, when he was playing fetch with Stephanie, she went to pick up the ball and Batman just forgot to pay attention to the trap and kind of accidentally wandered in and tripped the light beam. He was finally trapped at 6:13 PM. I was away on a search for a lost cat, with Raphael and Tino, but I got the message that we caught one. They transferred Batman to a regular trap, and had him in the large trap, contained, as bait for Robin. As we were driving home from our search, I got the message that Robin went into the trap at 9:16. Finally the dynamic duo were safe.

When they were safe in someone’s garage, Susan cut the chain collar off of Robin. It had made a channel through the fur, but didn’t seem to have cut the skin yet. The next day, the two dogs made it to the King County shelter and were checked in. They are doing okay at the shelter, although Batman is less happy about it than Robin is. They will get the veterinary care they need, and be spayed and neutered. They are safe. I hope they might find a home where they can be adopted together, but realistically that is hard to find. It is more likely they will be adopted separately. They survived. They survived being dumped twice, once by owners who didn’t want them and once by volunteers who were working so hard to save them. I am relieved that our gamble paid off and we were able to catch them both. 8 volunteers from Useless Bay Sanctuary invested about 100 volunteer hours using two regular traps, one very large trap, a drone, a search dog, several rotisserie chickens, several cans of Vienna sausage, three wildlife cameras, and several squeaky toys to catch Batman and Robin. We are all so happy they are safe. I hope wherever they are adopted we can continue to follow their adventures. I hope I never again have to experience that horrible feeling of abandoning a dog, even though we were doing it for the right reasons and we eventually prevailed. I think I can speak for all of the volunteers when I say, Batman and Robin, we love you.