Wolfie Part Two

Wolfie finds a home.

Wolfie Part Two

A couple of months ago, I wrote about Wolfie, a dog who had been living in a swamp between an industrial park and a freeway in Auburn. A few days after that, we caught the dog. The people in the area had been telling me the dog was male, but it turned out she was female, and very fluffy, so it wasn’t easy to tell.

Wolfie was cautious of standard traps. I have caught over a thousand dogs in my trusty, rusty, Tru Catch 48 F folding trap, over the years. I caught Fozzie in this trap, and also Tino’s mother. It folds down to about a quarter of its full size, making it much easier to transport. It works for most dogs, but not all dogs. For the difficult ones, we have the kennel trap, which is 10 feet long, 6 feet tall, and 5 feet wide. It has a light beam that releases the door from a magnetic holder when the dog breaks the beam. Then springs and bungee cords pull the door shut. This trap is very large, even when disassembled, and needs to be moved in a truck, not my Prius. Kari kindly agreed to help. She drove a long way. Also, I was under doctor’s orders not to lift anything heavy, so she had to move the panels and equipment mostly by herself. I helped her as much as I could with the assembly.

Not long after Kari left to go home and take care of her dogs, Wolfie showed up. It didn’t take her long to go in the big trap, and she was captured, safe. She didn’t panic too much. I hurried to the trap to make sure she didn’t try to get out by forcing the door out of the frame or by climbing the walls, as some dogs have in the past. She was relatively calm, just a little nervous. I went inside the kennel trap with her, to get to know her. I called Kari to come back and help me take the trap down.

After Wolfie became accustomed to me, I was able to scan her. I was surprised to find a chip. I figured, if she was living in a swamp for a month and no one was looking for her, that probably meant she didn’t have a chip. Not only did she have a chip, but it turned out that Kari and I had caught her before! In July, we trapped her as a stray in Federal Way, about 8 miles away. We had caught her in a 48 F trap, which explained why she wouldn’t go in one this time.

When I got a good look at her, I did recognize her as the dog we had caught before. I called the microchip company, and it turned out that she had been re-homed to a new owner. When I tried to contact the new owner, the alternate contact said he was in jail, and not getting out any time soon. Poor Wolfie. This sweet girl had been let down by multiple people.

Kari took her home for the night while we tried to figure out what to do with her. Wolfie turned out to be a very sweet girl, and Kari fostered her for two months. Wolfie liked to play with Rosie and Bebe. Wolfie came to our Sunday training sessions, and she was the target dog for Valentino and Raven and Anna. We all went to the off-leash park after training, and Wolfie played with all the dogs. Kari loved having Wolfie, even though she destroyed a few things she shouldn’t have.

On December 26th, Wolfie went to her new home. She now lives with a dog named Penny, and a cat. She is going to have a very good life with a family who cherishes her, and a dog friend to play with. If she ever needs us in the future, UBS will be standing by to help her if she is ever lost or in need of a new home for some unforeseen reason. We will miss her.

—-

I would like to thank the people who subscribe to this newsletter, both free and paid subscriptions. I hope you enjoy these stories about dogs like Wolfie. I feel it is also important to get this information out there, so people know how dogs like Wolfie are eventually caught and helped. I have published more than 250 articles in this newsletter, and most of them have valuable information that could someday help your cat or dog. If everyone knew the information in these newsletter articles, dogs and cats would go missing less often, and be found faster. While my main goal with this newsletter is to provide information that helps dogs and cats, it is also a supplemental income. Valentino and Raphael and I get paid for the searches we do under the banner of Three Retrievers. We have more requests for help than we can meet. However, the requests usually come in waves, so I have too many requests on some days, and no requests for help on other days. My income from Three Retrievers is not always reliable. Also, we schedule searches and then the dog or cat is found, which is great, but then we are left without income that day. I also spend about as much time helping dogs under the banner of Useless Bay Sanctuary, as a volunteer. I rely on the income from this newsletter to help me help dogs and cats in need. If you are a paying subscriber, please know that your subscription makes a huge difference to me, and keeps Tino supplied with cookies. Free subscribers also help to get the word out. If possible, please share this newsletter with someone that you think might enjoy stories like this one about Wolfie. Also, please comment below to tell me which stories you would like to have more of.