This week’s MVP is Vienna sausage

Disgusting and slimy, but loved by dogs.

This week’s MVP is Vienna sausage

Tino and I started driving to Blaine with a 48 inch trap and several cans of Vienna sausage.  We were driving two hours to help Buddy, who had been running for a week.  Originally from Iran, he had escaped his foster home in Surrey, BC, shortly after arriving in Canada.  Buddy ran from everyone who tried to help him, and he crossed the border into Washington.  He was seen on I-5, and ran as far south as Ferndale before heading north again.  By the time I got there, he had run at least 60 miles, and was 12 miles from the original point of escape.

We got a report that he was seen just before I got there.  As we were looking around, a local volunteer said she was attempting to help.  I explained to her, possibly not as clearly as I could have, that I was there with a humane trap, and our goal was just to get Buddy to stop running, to settle in one place.  Moments later, I saw her driving her red Volkswagen through people’s yards in pursuit of Buddy as he trotted away from her.  Either she seemed not to get the concept of not chasing him, or she was just intent on chasing him anyway.  Buddy eluded her and crossed into another field near a church and a large forest.  I asked volunteers to stay back and keep watch, to see if he came out of that area.  I set the trap and a wildlife camera near the point where he was last seen.  Although the wildlife camera was triggered by something overnight, Buddy didn’t go in the trap that night.

The next day, he was reported in Birch Bay, miles from the trap.  We started the two hour drive again, and someone from his rescue in Canada said she would meet me at the point he was last seen.  One of the volunteers asked me what we should use to lure Buddy, and I immediately replied, Vienna sausage.  I guess that wasn’t a very satisfying answer because the group started a long and elaborate conversation about what sorts of food they would use to lure him, including bacon, liver, and tripe.  Not that there’s anything wrong with those, but I haven’t found anything that works better than Vienna sausage, which is cheap, stores easily, and is available at almost every convenience store.  The volunteer getting the various savory treats was coming from Canada, and if I read the thread correctly, she was stopped at the border and barred from entering, apparently because she was bringing in all this food.  Perhaps I misread the comments, but at any rate, the person with all of the elaborate food, which she spent a considerable time going to several stores to get, was not coming after all.

Just as Tino and the Vienna sausage and I were about to reach the point last seen, the volunteer from the rescue said that she saw Buddy!  She was following him down the main road of Birch Bay.  I soon caught up to her, driving slowly with her hazard lights on as she followed Buddy, trotting along steadily.   Traffic was slowly working around the obstacle, and Buddy just ignored the cars for the most part.  I pulled around and got ahead of them, and I opened the can of Vienna sausage from the glove box, and poured out the liquid, out the window, trying not to get the slimy liquid on myself.  Going slowly, staying ahead of Buddy, I started tossing bits of Vienna sausage out the window, in Buddy’s path.  He was trotting along with his head down, seemingly intent on running another 60 miles, when his nose caught the scent of the Vienna sausage.  That definitely snapped him out of his trance, and he gobbled up the bits.  I had him going down the road like Pac-Man gobbling energizer pellets.  I got far enough ahead that I would have time to jump out and unfold the 48 inch trap, and set it and baited it with more Vienna sausage.  Buddy just happily munched his way along the breadcrumb trail until he got to the trap.  He hardly even hesitated.  He went in, stepped on the trigger plate, the door fell down, and he was done.  He tried to push on the door a little to see if it would open, then he just laid down and gave up.  He seemed like he was tired of running and ready to go home.

During his travels, dozens of people, possibly hundreds, saw him running and wanted to help.  It seems that almost all of them tried to help by moving toward him.  This is why he kept running 60 miles through British Columbia and Washington, sometimes on the freeway.  Each time someone moved toward him, it triggered him to run farther and faster.  Because of my experience with dogs like this, I was able to get ahead of him and lure him to come to the trap, to safety.  It’s great that people want to help stray dogs, but I wish I could get the word out that moving toward a stray is almost always going to be the wrong approach.  Get him to come to you.

Later in the week, someone read about our success with Buddy, and asked if we could provide similar help for Roley, a dog that had been wandering in Ferndale for a week.  Tino and I loaded up more Vienna sausage and started driving the two hours up there.  Brenda and her search dog, Raphael, started driving there, too.  We took two cars so that we could cover more ground while searching.  The search dogs would just be keeping us company, not following scent trails, because it was already too warm to work a scent trail.  We got to Ferndale and learned a bit more about his pattern of movements.  I set the trap near the point he was last seen, and then I drove and looked in one area while Brenda checked another area.  Brenda saw him fairly quickly, in a gravel yard that was closed for the holiday weekend and quiet.  Roley was under a large excavator, relaxing in the shade.  At first he moved away from Brenda and Raphael, but then he turned and came back a little, keeping his distance but showing interest.  I brought Tino there and played fetch with him where Roley could see us, and join us if he wanted to.  He declined.  I set the trap close enough that he could smell the food, but not so close that I would disturb him.  I hardly had time to step away and start recording video before he walked into the trap and it closed.  He was very calm about being trapped, and seemed ready to stop running.  The right equipment and the right approach and technique, and the right bait, caught Roley quickly and easily when people had not been having any luck calling his name or asking him to come to them.

Because we had caught Roley so quickly, it appeared that we had time to head to Langley, on Whidbey Island, and set a trap for a chocolate Lab.  This young dog had been running for days.  She was originally running with two black dogs, and several local volunteers were trying to help them.  Sadly, because people kept moving towards these cautious dogs and making them run, two of the dogs were hit by cars and killed before we could get there to set the trap.  We really wanted to catch the chocolate Lab quickly, before she was accidentally killed.  We got there and looked around the area where she was last seen.  Several locals were very helpful, showing us where she usually went, and allowing us to set the trap in a quiet place on private property.  Shortly after we set the trap and camera, we saw her flying down the road toward us, sprinting in panic as people were stopping their cars on the road and trying to catch her.  She ran right past the trap at full speed, but just beside the trap she suddenly stopped for just a moment and smelled the Vienna sausage.  After sniffing for a split second, she darted into the bushes.  I was pretty sure she would come back to the trap since she knew it was a source of food.  We waited a while, hoping she would go in right away, but then we had to take the ferry home.  I figured she would go in soon.  The local volunteer agreed to check the trap periodically. The next morning, shortly after dawn, she went in and was safe, finally.  The trap and the Vienna sausage saved her life.

At the end of the week that began with Buddy in Blaine, I was driving home when someone posted about a white Husky in White Center, just south of Seattle.  She had been seen around the area, and people had chased her for miles, in circles.  I had tried to trap her earlier in the week, but I was told that a neighbor said she lived near there.  I figured she would probably go back home when her owner came home, so I took the trap away that day.  When I heard she was still loose and being chased again, I headed toward her location with my can of Vienna sausage.  When I had observed her earlier in the week, I saw she was visiting male, intact dogs in the neighborhood and flirting with them through the fences.  She seemed to be in heat.  I located her right away just outside the fence of one of the dogs she had been interested in.  I had Fozzie with me, who is neutered, but still quite charming and non-threatening.  I saw her before she saw us, and I established a trail of Vienna sausage bits down the sidewalk, going towards the house where I thought she probably lived.  She followed us down the sidewalk for a block, snacking right along.  When I opened the gate where she reportedly lived, she followed the trail of Vienna sausage right in.  A neighbor shut the gate behind us.  She followed us down the long driveway, and her owner was out in the yard.  I asked if she was his dog, and he said, “Oh, there you are.”  I explained that she had been running around for a couple of days and had been chased for miles.  He didn’t seem to care.  But anyway, she was home, such as it was, and not running in traffic.

Vienna sausage saved four dogs in one week.  Of course, the right equipment, experience, and training helped, too.  When I tell people that Vienna sausage is great for catching dogs, they seem skeptical.  They seem to want something exotic, or a secret weapon.  I’m sure filet mignon and bacon would work just fine to catch a dog, but you can toss a few cans of Vienna sausage in your glove box, and you are ready to jump out and lure a dog to safety at any moment.

One precaution about having Vienna sausage in the car: don’t leave it where your 110 pound, too-smart Gerberian Shepsky can get at it.  I was doing a search with Mu while Tino was in the car, and we returned to find that he had chewed open four cans of Vienna sausage and eaten all of their contents.  He also chewed the cans like bubble gum.  I tried to assemble all the fragments to make sure he had not ingested any of the metal bits.  I called the vet right away, and they said just to keep an eye on him.  He has been just fine.  Now I keep the Vienna sausage inside a tool box.  So far, Tino hasn’t figured out how to open that. Yet.