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

Pete

Minneapolis residents Josh and Ashley woke at 3 a.m. to their dog Casey barking, and when they looked out the window, the saw a dog outside their house. Possibly a bull terrier/Vizsla mix, the dog was there the next day, too, but ran when Josh tried to catch him. They placed a shelter–a cardboard box lined with a sleeping bag–in their front yard and started putting out food, and the dog seemed pleased to have both.

Although Josh reached out to local rescues to help “Pete,” sadly none were able to come to his aid. However, we learned about Pete through our network of friends and rescue advocates, and Retriever Jen Eidbo went to the house to help.

She found Pete lying in the box–shaking with fear–so she immediately sat to one side and asked Josh to bring her pieces of hotdog and a leash. Pete sniffed her hand with no issues. Jen fed him dog treats and slowly gained his trust. In time, he let her pet his neck, ears and muzzle.

With every piece of hotdog, Jen moved the leash a little closer. When she was finally able to get the leash around his neck, Pete was still shaking but did not attempt to bolt.

They then opened the top of the box and petted Pete for a while, but he wouldn’t come out on his own. So Jen gently pulled the sleeping bag out from under him, causing him to slowly stand and walk out. With a little coaxing, Pete was led into the house and into a crate lined with the same bedding that had comforted him for the last couple of days.

Josh and Ashley fostered Pete for several days until a rescue was found. He was transferred to 4 Luv of Dog for placement into a permanent home.

In March 2014, we learned about a stray Chesapeake Bay Retriever who had shown up in the North Branch, Minnesota, area the previous fall. Fed by several Good Samaritan families, the Chessie had survived on his own in a wooded area through the harsh winter of 2013-2014.

This dog was seemingly friendly, but was not willing to let anyone get within 100 feet to try to help him.

An action plan was put in place and the Retrievers team set out the Missy Trap to try to bring this survivor in from the cold.  Because the families had done such a good job of getting the dog into a feeding routine, he was remaining in the general area and returning to the same two locations for food.

We set up the Missy Trap at 4 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon as the Chessie sat and watched from a distance.  Initially, we’d planned to lock the gate open for the night to allow him to get comfortable with the trap. But since he was not scared away by our commotion, we decided to try to catch him that same day.

For four hours, we observed him from inside a parked vehicle as he walked hesitantly around the trap, too skittish to enter. But eventually, the aroma of the tasty bait and treats inside overpowered his fear. Once he was far enough into the trap, we triggered the gate to close, and we had him.

We named him Winter. He is as kind a dog you could ever meet, and he seemed to be relieved when we caught him. He spent his first night with one of the Retriever team members, and the following morning was transported to the Chesapeake Retriever Rescue of Wisconsin.  He is doing very well in foster care and they have renamed him Yukon.

On December 8, 2013, Samuel slipped his collar shortly after arriving at a local rescue’s foster home. Numerous volunteers from the rescue mounted an aggressive search for the young German Shepherd, putting countless flyers into the hands of residents and businesses in the area and placing signs at many intersections.

In late January, a Good Samaritan in the area noticed Samuel in his yard of his home. At first glance he thought Samuel was a coyote, but he quickly realized it was a German Shepherd. He and his wife recalled the signs they’d seen for Samuel, and they contacted his rescue. For two weeks, the homeowner left food every day in the same location in his backyard, and soon Samuel was making the trip to the feeding station a couple times a day, often around 3 p.m.

Habituating Samuel to the feeding station was key, because now we were able to deploy the Missy Trap where we expected he would be. We set up the trap on a Saturday morning. According to photos from the trail camera, Samuel visited the trap several times that day.

We decided to lock the gate open for the first day to allow Samuel to get used to the trap’s presence and be comfortable going inside. We learned from the trail cam that he went inside the trap each time he stopped by. The following day, February 6, we set the trap door to trigger using an electromagnetic release. Retrievers volunteer Greg James and Samuel’s foster observed from a vehicle parked 200 feet away, waiting for Samuel to make his appearance.

At 3 o’clock, right on schedule, Samuel walked out of the woods and slowly approached the trap. Enticed by the fresh food at the back of the trap, he walked fully inside. Greg cut the power to the electromagnet, triggering the gate to fall closed.

After 70 long days on his own in the harsh Minnesota winter—which had included stretches of subzero weather caused by a polar vortex—Samuel was finally captured and was returned to his foster home. He had lost 30 pounds but was otherwise in good health—a true testament to the resilience of these dogs when they are on their own.

As of this writing, Samuel is safe, warm and doing well in his foster home.