The distraught owners of Zoe the blue heeler understood what they had to do when she vanished in Shoreline, Washington, last winter while wandering wild in the snow close to Interstate 5.
They immediately uploaded a picture of their adorable cow dog to the huge “Lost Dogs of King County WA” Facebook group, where volunteers like moderator Lily Burns were waiting to assist.
I-5 is a screaming death trap, and Zoe’s owner, Laurel Gray, was “absolutely panicked” about the dog surviving the cold and avoiding it. “It was like as soon as we pressed ‘enter’ on the computer, she was there,” she said.
Burns, a self-employed graphic designer, is one of the oddball patron saints of abandoned dogs in the Facebook group. She gives the owners some advice, warns them when people are spotted, removes offensive comments, and occasionally leaves her Redmond apartment to follow animals through the streets.
That is a big reason why the Lost Dogs group, which Burns and two other animal enthusiasts run, stands out in a world of social media where bullying and sniping can seem the standard. There are more lost dogs than the organization’s 33,000 members can swiftly handle, the animal control officers and shelters in the Seattle region have grown to rely on it.
Dogs that Gray raised with her son Ethan, her husband Tom, and dogs like Zoe. On New Year’s Eve, Zoe fled from Ethan’s yard, possibly scared by the fireworks.
The family had previously come across another person’s stray, which is how they learned about the Lost Dogs organization. Now was their chance to ask for assistance.
Burns was prepared: Driven by her encounters with the healing potential that dogs possess, she becomes involved in thousands of instances each year.
The volunteer admitted that “I can honestly say I’m more comfortable with dogs than with people. I don’t think there are any bad dogs.”
According to Kathy Pickart, a Kent retiree who was reunited with her Shih Tzu, Sidney, many people join the Lost Dogs group intending to find a specific dog but end up sticking around because they enjoy the community’s cheerful vibe.
Pickart said, “You follow these stories. You are definitely hooked.”
Kent nurse Tahmia DelReal stated that since locating her terrier-poodle mix named Buddy with the help of the public, she has twice helped additional stray animals.
Elisa Engel believed her dog Doug was lost forever after he ran away from home in Normandy Park, but the Lost Dogs organization managed to find him 10 miles away in Delridge. She declared, “It was miraculous.”
Burns joined the Lost Dogs group because she is aware of the anxiety associated with pet loss. One of her twin canines escaped while on a stroll with her harness off when they were younger. Only 20 minutes later, the Zoey Chihuahua mix was adopted. However, she claimed that those moments were marked with “shock, terror, dread … that I would never ever see her again.”
Burns learned more about canine behavior and increased his measures after the upsetting incident. For instance, even when it is their devoted owner calling their name or chasing after them, lost dogs tend to flee. According to Burns, placing snacks out and waiting patiently is preferable.
Burns created a record-keeping system and shared advice with other members of the Lost Dogs group soon after joining. To later “make matches” between reports of lost dogs and stray dogs, she captures the posts, noting the breed and owner details. James Branson, the group’s founder, urged Burns to take on the role of moderator.
Branson is a canine guardian angel in his own right; he runs a charitable organization called Useless Bay Sanctuary and owns a business that employs trained dogs to look for lost pets. When dogs go missing, he travels the Puget Sound region, whereas Burns is more active on Facebook.
She logs on by eight in the morning most days to begin navigating around the Lost Dogs page. Her home base is the King County group, but she also frequently monitors similar lost dog groups in other Puget Sound jurisdictions.
When Branson held a fundraiser for Burns in June, participants gave more than $10,000. Branson stated, “She helps lost dogs every day because she is good at it, and because she cannot help.”
Tim Anderson, the agency’s lead sergeant, stated that “our goal is to always get animals reunited with people,” at Regional Animal Services of King County, which has contracts with 24 cities and runs an animal shelter in Kent.
Due to a shortage of shelter space and the fact that each animal costs taxpayers, he added, “We do a great job, but we don’t want people’s pets if we can help it.”
The Seattle Animal Shelter independently hires 12 police to cover the city in addition to the county’s eight animal control officers, who are on duty seven days a week in the suburbs. They are unable to capture every stray dog, though.
Because of this, the authorities occasionally suggest that callers use social media sites like the Lost Dogs group. Staff members scan the Lost Dogs group and similar websites when strays arrive at the county’s shelter to see if they can find matches, according to Anderson. Online communities and those who can connect lost dogs with their owners directly are “a huge help to us,” he continued.
Additionally, the county maintains its websites for lost and found animals. In addition to posting on social media, “We encourage people to always file a report with us” on lost and discovered dogs, Anderson said.
Dogs should have license tags and microchips so that their owners can be located if they go missing and are discovered, according to Esteban Rodriguez, director of the Seattle Animal Shelter.
According to Anderson, the county does not put pets to death to make room in the shelter, but there is a limited amount of room. After the COVID-19 pandemic started and many people acquired pets, stray dog intakes decreased in 2020 and 2021. However, as people “return to work and get back to the norm,” he claimed, it is already increasing.
Burns has also observed a change in the Lost Dogs group. “We used to have 12 posts a day,” the woman recalled. “Now we have about 30.”
The time was passing quickly up in Shoreline as Zoe was out in the snow by herself. Dogs can be challenging to capture, even when they carry microchips, as Zoe did.
Burns advised the Grays to create lost dog posters that said “Do not chase” and to post them on numerous local apps. She and the other members of the group claimed random sightings of Zoe as she moved between 145th Street and 185th Street, occasionally crossing I-5.
She spent some time sleeping on someone’s porch after accepting some food from “a guy at 185th and Corliss.” She was captured on camera by Ring.
Strangers were already looking for Zoe in a park when the Grays arrived there since they had read about the case online.
“People we’d never met,” Gray said, “out there looking for her.”
Zoe was located in an arbitrary backyard by neighbors more than two days after she went missing. She had blood on her paws and smelled bad, but she was still alive.
Gray credited Burns and Branson, who along with other group members transformed the Lost Dogs group from a virtual message board into a real, caring community, saying, “My son and I were in the car and we were both crying.”
“Which is tremendous,” Gray remarked. “You don’t see that a lot.”
Source: The Seattle Times
