How I moved, lost my dog and regained faith in humanity over 5 days in July

Sometime late last fall, my husband, two sons and I decided to move. We’d lived for 17 years in Brentwood — front-row seats to the best Fourth of July parade around — but wanted a house with two bathrooms, maybe a game room and a bigger yard for the boys and our two dogs.

After months of online searching, packing, cleaning and selling our house, we found the perfect place. It’s in Rostraver, has nearly four acres and is a wooded bliss. For years, there’s been so much dissension and noise and discontent — this house felt like we were out camping all the time.

We all knew immediately upon pulling in the driveway, during our first viewing, that it was home.

So on July 8, we pulled away from Brentwood and moved in. On the same day, because we love our dogs almost as much as our boys, we had a 5-foot-tall chain-link fence installed — giving them about a half acre to romp around in.

The first time Hudson, our golden retriever, raced across the grass, I swear you could see him smiling. Trooper, a 6-year-old border collie- Great Pyrenees-Australian cattle dog mix, was a little more reserved.

He’s the one the fence was really for. He can jump ridiculously high from a standstill and is by far the smartest dog we’ve ever had.

We were thrilled at how quickly the fence was done and loved how happy we felt. We had no idea what was in store for us over the next few days — a roller coaster of turmoil, hope and faith in humanity.

On July 12, our new neighbor called and said Trooper must have gotten out. He was in our neighbor’s yard — having dug under the fence.

The neighbor tried to retrieve him, but Trooper ran away. We panicked. Our new house is very close to a highway on one side — but also close to miles and miles of wooded trails on the other.

We spent 12 hours on Tuesday walking all those trails and yelling Trooper’s name — to no avail. By Tuesday night, all of our friends and family joined in trying to help — posting Trooper’s pictures and information on social media and lost-pet sites.

I called the police and local shelters and veterinarians.

We laid out our dirty laundry all through the woods hoping to give him a scent trail to follow home. We left the gates open in case he showed up.

But when I went to bed about 1 a.m. Wednesday, I was completely dejected. I got up a few hours later, went outside and called for him again. Nothing.

About three hours later, we caught our first break. The Rostraver police called to tell me someone had just spotted Trooper near the Vance De Cais Highway.

I raced over — it’s about five miles from our house — soon to be joined by good friends of our family, but also by complete strangers who wanted to help.

One woman spotted Trooper on Lenity School Road and messaged us. Then a friend helping us look spotted him on a man’s farm.

Each time they tried to get close, Trooper was gone. One woman said he was likely in fight-or-flight mode.

A super kind man at the farm took me in his Jeep up over the hay fields to call for Trooper in the wood line. We didn’t find him but did scare away two deer who hissed at us.

Then we got another tip, again that Trooper was on Lenity School Road. A woman who lived there said her brother would be home around 3 or 4 p.m. and would be happy to go out looking for him on his side-by-side off-highway vehicle.

Another man who lived near there rode his dirt bike through the woods searching. He asked if we wanted to use his extra ATV to look, as well.

A woman who lived nearby bought a wild dog humane trap to loan us.

All of these complete strangers not only gave their time but their very expensive belongings to us — people who had lived in the community for not even a week.

Losing hope

As I searched — sometimes for hours with not a sighting or the slightest bit of hope — I tried not to get consumed by my emotions. I was certainly unstable — having not slept much and eaten only a single piece of pizza in 24 hours.

But also, even in the midst of the emotional trauma, I still felt so much gratitude to everyone helping. As I walked the ridges and gas well paths and got torn up by myriad brush and thorns, I also saw the beauty all around me, thinking to myself how lovely this would be if I were just out for a hike.

I talked to God a lot that day, asking for any kind of help.

By about 6 p.m., we had a pretty large group gathered for the search. Between our family and friends, there were about a dozen people. And one of them called friends who were licensed drone pilots. They got set up and started flying over the area Trooper had been seen throughout the day, and holy heck, they spotted him! He was on the top of … the landfill.

So then we were in the landfill. About six of us hiked up the mountain and spread out, trying to find him. As gross as you think it was, multiply that by about 10. Still, we were filled with hope.

And then the drone lost signal, and we lost sight of where he was. Trooper was freaking gone again.

We trudged back down the mountain. But our friend was still traversing the area on the borrowed ATV. A few minutes later, he came racing back toward us.

“I saw him. The ATV stalled, and he ran right in front of me. Come on!”

And so there I was, on the back of the ATV, gripping Andrew’s long-sleeve shirt (he came prepared to be in the woods, versus me in my tank top) and burying my face in his back so I couldn’t see the terrifying terrain he was covering at much too quick a speed.

We raced along the trail where Trooper had been, and then my husband called my cellphone.

“I see him,” he shouted in my ear.

He was back at the landfill, and Trooper had just bounded over a huge section of boulders, still running.

Andrew and I turned around, raced back up the mountain, ducking branches, leaning hard against the drop-offs so we didn’t flip over, and again traced the path we thought Trooper was on. We followed it for what seemed like forever but never did see him.

He’d gotten away.

Like a movie

Again, I felt heartbroken. I kept thinking that we’d moved to this great new property at least in part for our dogs, and now my first real memory of our new house was going to be that “this was the place we lost Trooper.”

By now it was dark — around 10 p.m. — and it was time to let people go home. It had been a long couple of days. I’d walked 25 miles looking for our damn dog.

We all gathered at our cars on Lenity School Road near the underpass where Trooper been seen so many hours earlier to say goodbye.

As I turned to head to my car, the man who had gone out to look hours earlier on his side-by-side pulled up. I assumed he was coming to say “good night, better luck tomorrow.”

And then, just like in the movies, I did a double-take.

It was amazing.

Trooper was sitting in his passenger seat, panting hard and looking like Batman’s sidekick.

Cole Naylor, Batman in this scenario, had gone back up after we headed off the mountain. He knew Trooper was up there somewhere, he said, so he kept looking.

Then he spotted him. Trooper was lying in a field, Cole said, looking like he was about to pounce on something. When Trooper saw Cole, he took off again. Cole said he almost caught him three times, trying to grab his collar, but, each time, Trooper would swerve and get away.

Then, he ran into the road, stopped traffic, ran onto Cole’s ex-girlfriend’s porch and then again escaped.

But finally, he was too tired to outrun him.

Trooper slowed just enough, and Cole leaned over and scooped 60 pounds of running dog up and into his side-by-side.

“He was a tricky one to catch,” Cole said.

When I asked him why he would spend so much of his time helping strangers, Cole said, “I was just doing what I would want someone to do for me.”

It’s like something out of a movie.

But even better because it’s a real-life happy ending.

The number of people who came out to help that day — physically looking; keeping an eye out for our too-smart dog; sending messages of encouragement; or sacrificing their time and valuables in the search — was incredible.

At a time when life can so often be so hard, and there’s so much division, it was a remarkable reminder of how much good and kindness there is in the world.

Epilogue

Trooper was pretty sore for a couple days after. He was walking like an old man, and boy, he didn’t like stepping on gravel at all. But a vet has given him a pretty clear bill of health, and he has settled back in at home (though not out of our sight) 🙂