Do you know where your dog is? Disappearances on rise across state
Thursday, November 29, 2007
By Jake Nichols
Jackson Hole, Wyoming - It can happen in a minute. A lifelong pet, a cherished family member, is chewing on a bone in the backyard, and then, just like that, he’s gone.
Star Valley residents aren’t the only ones who have experienced a rash of dog disappearances recently. In communities across the nation and overseas, dogs are going missing. Some studies put the number at 2 million a year. And no one knows why.
Cracking the canine caseOn Oct. 8, Scott Walker and his son were messing with a colt in their backyard. Walker remembered hearing a bang, maybe a car door. Minutes later, his blue heeler, a faithful companion Walker regarded “like a child,” was gone.
“The dog was chewing on a bone in the shade,” Walker recalled. “Then he just disappeared.”
In seven years, Walker said his dog left the property only once. The gates were closed. He could only access the yard beside the house because it bordered a construction site. He believes someone from that crew may have watched the dog for weeks before deciding to snatch it.
“He was real friendly,” Walker said, “and that’s the [type of] dog they’re going for.”
“They” remain a mystery to victims and law enforcement. Are these dogs being taken? If so, by whom? And why? What exactly is going on in Lincoln County where 30 dogs have been missing since spring?
“We’ve had dogs taken out of cars, off cables in yards. It’s amazing,” said Mary Ann Ahrens of the Animal Humane Association of Star Valley, Wyo. “Something’s just not right. This many dogs don’t go missing, never to be seen again.”
But they do. Last summer, in Clinton County, Iowa, eight Labrador retrievers within a 1.5-mile radius went missing. “There is something going on in the Elvira area,” one victimized dog owner said. Dozens of dogs “vanished without a trace” this autumn in Warrenton, Mo. Last year, scores of huskies were stolen in Riverton, Wyo. In Laramie, it’s heelers and border collies that vanished. In Boise, Yorkies.
While local authorities have been collectively slow to respond, word of the dog disappearance epidemic in Wyoming has reached the Governor’s desk. “He absolutely is aware of the problem,” said Cara Eastwood, Gov. Dave Freudenthal’s press secretary. “He is in communication with communities around the state and is definitely concerned about it. It is on the Governor’s radar.”
Why then isn’t law enforcement as concerned? “My husband called the Governor and he got back to us the next morning. The police took two weeks,” said Lanell Corsi. Corsi’s registered pit bull was swiped from an Etna ranch on Oct. 1 while it played with other dogs. She and her neighbors searched the area extensively on ATVs. They put up signs from Alpine to Smoot offering $1,000 in reward money. A yellow lab was also stolen from another family member’s yard, according to Corsi. “We know for a fact these dogs are being taken,” she said. “I pity the people if we catch them before the police do.”
Lincoln County Sheriff Shane Johnson acknowledged that reports of lost dogs have been on the rise in the “last few weeks,” but wants it known that there is still no evidence of any organized crime ring.
“We need to be accurate with this and the numbers,” Johnson said. “I have spoken with Mary Ann [Ahrens], and one of the issues we had is we don’t seem to have the same idea as to the numbers involved.” Johnson said his department has received only a handful of calls regarding missing dogs, while Ahrens puts the number at more like 30. “Many of these dogs are just going for a stroll,” Johnson said. “Dogs will be dogs. They get away, they chase things.”
Izzy, a 4-month-old black Lab owned by the Lurz family, was sitting in a locked car on Aug. 11 while his owners were dining in the Alpine Haus on their way back to Nebraska.
“We were in there maybe 30 minutes,” said James Lurz. “When we got back to the car, the dog was gone. The window, which was cracked enough for someone to slip their hand in, was forced down.”
A restaurant employee on a cigarette break later told the family he saw a white, teenaged male struggling with the dog as he led it away.
“Dogs taken out of vehicles is a concern to us,” Johnson said. His department dusted for prints and followed up on a few leads, but Izzy has never been seen again.
Four days later, Bonnie Weeks’ yellow Lab evaporated from the front yard. The deputy she spoke with said dogs were “going missing.” Weeks said she heard rumors that stolen dogs were being transported out of state and sold in Salt Lake City.
When Mack Baxter got a corgi-heeler mix for his 2-year-old daughter, he never let him out of the house for the first four months. One day, they decided to stake him to a cable in the back yard and left for two hours. When the family returned, Bubba’s collar was all that remained.
“Our 2-year-old daughter called [after] him for weeks,” Baxter said. “It floors me someone would steal a pet corgi. I don’t think they stop to realize what this does to families, to the kids.”
“Dogs are expensive,” Johnson said. “Some pure breeds – the Labs and the heelers – are popular around here. You can drop a little bit of money on them. The bottom line is, anything that’s of value to you, you need to take proper steps to protect that.”
They shoot dogs, don’t they?Many Star Valley residents say angry neighbors, ranchers or law enforcement themselves are shooting stray dogs. “If your dog gets on somebody’s property or they’re being a nuisance, down here, they just shoot ’em,” Ahrens said.
Kara Hymus let her dog, Sadie, out at her dad’s place in Afton with his dogs. It never came home with the rest of the pack. The family had had on-and-off disputes with the neighbors. “There’s not a lot of nice people around here anymore,” Hymus said. “Even deputies shoot dogs around here.”
“The only time law enforcement shoots a dog is when the dog is a violent dog that we can’t catch and has been involved in a biting,” Johnson insisted. “Then our duty is with the victim and we have to get rabies testing done. We won’t shoot a dog for being stray or barking.”
Departmental policy is only as good as its deputies, however. Just last week in Teton County, Idaho, Deputy Joseph Gutierrez showed up at the home of the Barboza family and ordered their dog Bobby to be brought outside and tied to a stake. “I’m here to kill him,” the deputy told Leo Barboza. When asked for documentation, the officer claimed he didn’t need any and fired three shots into the animal’s head from close range while the family looked on in horror. The dog miraculously survived, the Barbozas are suing, and the deputy is on suspension pending an outside investigation.
“You get a story like this and you wonder if this is an isolated incident or is this business as usual,” Dr. Jeff Rosenthal, executive director of the Idaho Humane Society, wondered. “There should be some due process for something like this. Animals are important parts of people’s families.”
“We don’t typically go out there and shoot a dog,” responded Teton County, Idaho, Sheriff Kim Cooke. He added that Gutierrez was fairly new to the force.
Some dogs do, indeed, do their business on the wrong lawn or chase a spring calf and are never seen again. “There are ranchers who can, and do, shoot dogs that are harassing their stock,” Johnson said. “It is naïve to think that doesn’t happen. And, typically, the rancher is not going to tell us about it, or the dog owner. So no one ever knows.”
Not knowing is what eats at area dog owners who spend days absent-mindedly talking to pets that are no longer underfoot. They wake at night easier, straining their ears at the far off sound of a dog barking, wondering, “Where is he now? Is he safe, warm, happy?”
Where dogs go to dieThe unknown is a terrible burden to bear for owners of lost dogs. Dogs hit by cars or shot by neighbors are sometimes better off than those who await a life of torture and mistreatment after they are coaxed into a stranger’s car. With dog fighting on the rise nationwide, and with Wyoming’s relatively lax laws, it is speculated that some dogs are being swiped for use in illegal dog fighting rings. These dogs are either reprogrammed to become fighting dogs or, in the more common scenario, used as “bait” animals to spar with killer canines.
Teah Collins, a vet tech with G Bar G Veterinary Service in Riverton, remembers a rash of missing dogs in Fremont County a few years ago.
“Three years ago, they were stealing boxers,” Collins said. “They stole one from this lady and it was her family. She looked all over for it. She had ads everywhere and was offering a $1,000 for its return. The dog finally turned up on Gas Hills Road. A spray painted sign pointed to the barrow ditch and said, ‘Here’s your stupid dog.’ It was dead. It had been fought to death for months.”
Rosenthal said, “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind there is dog fighting going on, involving hundreds and hundreds of dogs.”
To infuse a taste for blood into a fighting dog, some backyard pets are pitted against up-and-coming fighting dogs in a lopsided match to teach the aggressor how to finish an opponent.
“To get a sense of how good their dog is, they look for bait dogs,” said Kathy Hooper. She manages the city animal shelter in Riverton where she said she has seen signs of dog fighting on a regular basis. “They use any bigger dog like Labs or Golden [Retrievers]. They will tie them to a tree and duct tape shut their mouth. It’s a horrific thing for any type of dog to die that way.”
Another piece of the puzzle could be the scientific, cosmetic and experimental laboratories that purchase dogs from USDA-registered, Class B dealers sometimes known as “bunchers.” These bunchers obtain unwanted pets through auctions, shelters and by answering “free to good home” ads in the classifieds. Any animal they sell to laboratories must be scanned for implanted microchips and be accompanied with detailed paperwork on how the animal was obtained. Still, it’s not unheard of for household dogs to go missing only to end up in research labs where they often undergo unsuccessful experimental surgeries or live out a caged life as a test subject for cosmetic firms.
So far, Teton County has not been affected by the missing dog phenomenon. County shelter manager Cory Ryback says that while she has heard rumors that dogs are sometimes stolen by meth dealers to test the lethality of newly cooked batches, she has seen no signs of local trouble - yet.
Jackson Hole dog owners still bristle at the memory of a spate of poisonings that sickened or killed 27 dogs in 2003. Hot dogs stuffed with the pesticide Temik were found scattered about town. The case was never solved but local authorities say the “person of interest” has left the area for good.
The Humane Society of the United States has caught wind of Lincoln County’s dog-gone problem and has offered a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any persons responsible. The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department has revamped the way it responds to lost dog calls and is looking into hiring its first animal control officer.
“People are passionate about their dogs. I understand that,” Sheriff Johnson said. “I have a dog I am attached to. It’s embarrassing how much I’m attached to that thing. If anything ever happened to it, I would feel like some of these people who have lost their pet.”
Nightmare is overFor weeks after Scott Walker lost his heeler, he investigated the case himself, following up on leads wherever they surfaced. He never gave up but he never fully expected to see his dog again, either. On a frosty Sunday morning he was fixing fence in his backyard. He called to a colt and heard a muffled whimper coming from the hay shed.
“I walked around the corner of the shed and my dog’s nose was sticking out of a broken window,” Walker recounted. “People told me he was probably in there the whole time. For 28 days without water? No way. I had feared he may have holed up in there so I checked in there no less than 30 times. I looked in through that same window three or four times a day.”
Walker said the dog looked skinnier and had a few scabs here and there, but it was the eyes that looked different. “They were glassy, not right, almost evil,” he said. The dog doesn’t play like he used to and growls occasionally – something he never did before he disappeared. But Walker is glad his is one of the all-too-few stories that ended happily. He only hopes others find their dog, or some news, or some peace.
Cover photo provided by Star Valley Humane Society: Misty disappeared from a Star Valley ranch and reappeared weeks later. PERMALINK:
Do you know where your dog is? Disappearances on rise across state | Planet JH News Article: Cover Stories
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