Retriever Bobbi Jo was contacted by a resident of her hometown in northern Minnesota about a black dog that had been hanging out near his business on the outskirts of town.  The dog appeared to be young and limping.  He was black and very skittish and would not let the man get near him.  Bobbi Jo had recent experience in the same town in capturing two goldendoodles (see that story here), and she jumped into action.

Bobbi Jo (BJ) immediately got awareness to the various outlets and authorities in hopes someone would come forward claiming to have lost the dog.  That never happened so we assume the dog had been dumped to fend for itself.

At the same time, BJ set up a feeding station in a secluded area of the property near where the dog had been seen.  She also set up a trail camera to get pics of the dog using the food/water station and she set up a wire kennel as shelter for the dog and to get it comfortable with entering an enclosure and to prepare him for capture in the trap.

For two weeks, each day BJ would stop by a few times a day to restock the food and water and check the camera.  The dog was staying in the area, eating from the feeding station and better yet, was feeding from inside the wire kennel.  The time was right to set up the trap for capture.

I drove up the four hours on a Friday and BJ and I quickly set up a new trap we have.  A Retriever fan had graciously donated a Great Dane sized wire kennel that I converted to use as a trap with our sensor/magnet set up.  We felt a Missy Trap was not needed (but I did bring one with just in case).  We set the trap near where the feeding station was and then ran the 200 feet of wire to my jeep which was parked a distance away behind some tall grass.  We decided to forego the sensor because we planned to manually kill power to the magnet from my jeep when the dog entered.  We sat and we waited.

We waited a short 45 minutes before the dog emerged from the tall grass and approached the feeding station area.  He first knew something was different and watched my jeep from the area.  He did a lap around the wire kennel.  He then walked over to the trap and his hunger overcame his caution and he walked right into the trap for the food.  We pulled the plug and the gate closed.  He was safely captured.

We did not confirm he was a boy until we calmly approached the trap.  He was a bit frightened/overwhelmed and peed, but we also confirmed him to be young.  Our guess was 6-7 months old.  After a couple minutes he was gently taking treats from BJ by hand and was already a sweet boy.

It was a hot and sunny day so we covered the top of the trap with a blanket to shade him.  We decided to name him Cash because his coat was all black and he was a surviving rebel like Johnny Cash.

We checked Cash for a microchip and there was none.

We loaded up the trap equipment and Cash into my jeep and then the trap itself onto the cargo carrier.  It was time to hit the road back home with Cash who would spend a couple nights with me until he went to rescue.   He slept all the way home in the cool AC of the jeep.

In the 48 hours I spent with Cash, I learned that he was a very, very sweet boy and just wanted to be a happy puppy and play with my two goldens.  On Sunday he was transferred to Fargo, ND to be fostered by 4 Luv of Dog Rescue.   At the time of this posting he is currently up for adoption.

We’re told he did well at his initial vet visit and is estimated to be 10-12 months old and his limp was from anaplasmosis, a tick borne disease.  Antibiotics will rid him of that.

A special thank you goes out to 4 Luv of Dogs Rescue for taking Cash into foster.  They already had a Cash in foster so we decided to change the name of our Cash to Lucky.  They will find Lucky a wonderful family and that family will be very lucky to have Lucky.

The plan from the start, to capture Lucky, was executed perfectly by Retriever Bobbi Jo.  Once again, she did a fantastic job in helping this dog and saving him.

Good luck and best wishes on a great life, Lucky.

Here’s a video of the capture shot from 200 feet away.

Then at 7:13, the camera sent a shot of Gina on site. Within a few minutes Jasper was safely inside the car and at the vet clinic.

At 9 hours, 54 minutes from initial call to safe recovery, this was the team’s quickest trapping yet. Jasper knew exactly what to do!

I’m very happy for Jasper and especially his family, who were able enjoy their vacation again. The clinic staff made sure that Jumpin’ Jasper remained earthbound for the rest of his stay.

The Retrievers first became aware of Rosebud when she was posted multiple times as a sighting on the Lost Dogs MN Facebook Page.  She had been seen in Minneapolis over a period of time of at least 6-8 weeks running scared and growing thin.  The Retriever’s were contacted and consulted to help bring this very deserving dog to safely.

Through the powers of social media and networking we met one gal, Jenny, who had been trying to develop a relationship with Rosebud in a community garden. The Retrievers offered consultation, advice and direct assistance for for the safe capture of Rosebud.

It was in the community garden that Rosebud was first sleeping and eating food Jenny was leaving out for her.  Through time Jenny was able to hand feed bites of hot dog to Rosebud, but Rosebud would never get close enough to let Jenny touch her.   Rosebud got her name because of the Roses that were blooming in the garden and this dog had become Jenny’s buddy.  Thus “Rosebud”

Then Rosebud started spending less time in the garden  with Jenny.  Jenny and other good samaritans trying to help her noted her using the Greenway bikepath in Minneapolis as a route for her travels.  They often saw people trying to chase her and were trying to get the word out to please stop chasing this dog.  They would see her put a foot into the street and wait for cars to honk or stop for her and then she would cross the street.  Other times she was observed in the street in the middle of traffic. She was frequently crossing very busy roads. At one point there had been a live trap left out by a local animal control which was unsuccessful in trapping Rosebud.

Jenny and her neighbor Jeff were trying desperately to rescue Rosebud.  Jenny and Jeff  searched for a possible family that was missing Rosebud.  For weeks they scoured online ads for a lost dog in the area.  They searched for posters or flyers about a missing dog in the community and found nothing.  If no family was found Jeff was prepared to offer Rosebud a forever home.

It was next determined that Rosebud was traveling 2.5 miles or more between 2 neighborhoods.  Rosebud was seen in one neighborhood daily at dinnertime over a period of several days.  One of the good samaritans living in that neighborhood, Stephanie, started a feeding station.  Because Rosebud had been seen near this location for 3 days straight, The Retriever’s put out their Missy trap at Stephanie’s feeding station for two nights.…. yet Rosebud continued to remain elusive.

By this time there were several good samaritans wanting to help and the community really started to join together in force.  Flyers were made and distributed, neighbor’s contacted neighbors through word of mouth and neighborhood websites and facebook.  People were trying to get the word out in the community about Rosebud and were asking people not to chase her but rather to call instead if she was sighted.

Then one morning a man on his way to work; 5.6 miles away from the neighborhood Rosebud was seen the evening before noticed a dog in the middle of a busy road.   He was able to lure her into his fenced in yard with bits of hot dog.  Rosebud was still very skittish…this kind man stayed home from work and sat in his yard with bits of hot dog trying to gain Rosebud’s trust.  Meanwhile his wife posted Rosebud on the Lost Dogs MN Facebook page asking, “is this your dog?”

At this time a diligent person who follows The Retrievers on facebook saw the posting on social media for a found dog and wondered if it could be Rosebud.  She notified The Retrievers immediately.

Soon the people closet to the search for Rosebud (Jenny, Jeff and Stephanie) arrived at this home.  It was Rosebud!   With patience and time, they were able to touch Rosebud gently and eventually have her walk into a crate.  Her time of roaming and scavenging to survive was finally over.

There is no way to describe the relief the good samaritans felt when Rosebud was finally safe after a minimum of 6-8 weeks on her own. Rosebud was taken directly to a vet for an examination with Jenny and Jeff by her side.  As the pictures showed, the vet said she was emaciated, but for the most part in good health.   After the vet visit, she was taken to Jeff’s home.

The Retrievers really like the story of Rosebud.  Through the powers of social media, networking, consultation, and flyers, a small community was formed for the love of Rosebud and her safety.  She finally has good food to eat, a soft bed to lie in and people that love her.

At last report she is doing well and Jenny and Jeff say she has started wagging her tail and loving tummy rubs…

After waiting for approximately 90 minutes with no sign of Princess, and with a severe thunderstorm moving in, Greg decided to pitch his tent behind his jeep and get ready for the night.  It was during this moment that Greg heard the gate of the trap close.  Upon looking through binoculars, it was determined that either Princess or a black bear was in the trap eating food.  After approaching the trap, it was quickly determined that it was in fact Princess, who was now trying to ram her way out of the trap gate that was locked.

Princess quickly calmed down after getting some pieces of hot dog from Greg.   Angie was called and showed up on-site minutes later.   Princess was covered in ticks and had mosquitoes landing all over her face for a meal.  Greg and Angie were able to coax Princess directly into a crate from the trap.  Once inside, Princess and the crate were slid on the ground to Angie’s car where she was loaded and immediately taken to the vet for care.  She had lost significant weight and the ticks and mosquitoes were of concern.

Princess was, for the most part, given a clean bill of health.  She had some sores and was given some Heartworm tablets, but no other long term effects.  She was happily returned to her owner and we’re told was very excited to see her.   Princess could hardly wait to get out of the crate to be next to her owner.

Thanks to Angie for reaching out to us and doing everything you did to get Princess home.  It was another successful ending and Princess is safe again.

On our Facebook page we learned of a Good Samaritan who was trying to help a stray dog in Owen, Wisconsin. For two months she had appealed to local authorities, to no avail. In desperation, she turned to the Retrievers.

As her job required driving between local communities, Tammy had frequently seen the dog in a field next to Hwy 29. Neighbors estimated that the dog, which she called “Owen,” had been in the area for up to two years. There was no photo—he would not allow anyone close enough to get decent shot. Neighbors described him as a setter or retriever mix.

Although that part of Wisconsin is outside of our normal operations area, I offered to take the case because I have personal connections to the town. I arrived early afternoon on a Saturday, set up the Missy Trap to trigger manually by cutting power to an electromagnet, then waited in my car a short distance away.

But Owen never showed. At 10:30 p.m., I reluctantly locked the trap gate open, turned on the cellular trail cam, instructed Tammy to stock the trap nightly with high-value food, then made the two-and-a-half-hour drive back to the Twin Cities.

For two days, we received no photos from the camera and assumed that it had malfunctioned. But then we discovered that our hosting service’s spam filter had intercepted the shots, and suddenly 80 timestamped images poured into our email boxes.

We learned that Owen had visited the trap only a few minutes after we had packed up and left. And he came again every night that week—multiple times a night, and usually around the same hours. In one shot, he was close enough to the camera for us to see that “he” was really a “she.” From that point, we began to call her “Rowan.”

Monitoring her activities by trail cam for a week enabled us to predict when she would visit the trap. The following Friday, I returned to Owen, this time with a colleague—M.J. Brookes—our newly developed photoelectric sensor system, and a catchpole specially designed and constructed by teammate Jen Eidbo.

The trail cam images had shown that a neighbor’s cat often visited the trap, so we set the sensor at a height too high for it to inadvertently break the beam and cause the gate to drop. And because we suspected Rowan had avoided the trap when we were present the previous weekend, we waited in a car parked 100 yards away as we monitored the trap via a video surveillance system comprised of Skype and two smartphones.

Rowan came by right on time at 9:45 p.m., but shocked us by skittering beneath the sensor beam. In less than 30 seconds, she ate much of her food and exited the trap without triggering the gate. Thankfully, because we’d observed her patterns, we knew she would be back. We lowered the sensor and waited again.

Rowan returned at 11:20 p.m., and this time walked through the beam and triggered the gate. As we approached the trap, she started climbing up the meshed panels and was halfway out when I was able to get the catchpole on her. She jumped down to the ground and went into a full-scale panic, writhing and growling and snarling and gnawing on the lead on the catchpole.

Luckily, we were able to get her into a crate before she could chew completely through and escape. Once she was in the crate and the tension was off the lead, she quickly calmed down.

Rowan turned out to be a much smaller dog than we had expected—likely a beagle/shepherd mix. Her later vet visit revealed her weight at only 33 pounds. No wonder she was able to duck under the beam! The vet estimated her age at 1 1/2 years. Though she was not spayed, she shows no evidence of having had a litter. She is heartworm-free, basically healthy, and not microchipped.

Rowan’s return to a home environment has been more successful than anyone could have predicted. Tammy reports that within the first few days, she was playing with the family’s other dogs and even enjoyed being brushed and petted by Tammy and her husband.

You can follow Rowan’s story on her Facebook page, Hope for Owen.

See also:

Woman Committed to Helping Stray Dog — Marshfield News Herald, April 21, 2014

Stray dog captured and given a home — Leader Telegram, May 5, 2014