Life lessons from losing your dog in the woods for three weeks.
Yup, our pup got lost in the California wilderness for 21 days. Here's what we were able to take away from the challenge.
TL;DR—
Lessons to be learned from losing your dog for three weeks:
It’s not personal
Keep it simple stupid
People want to help
People (and you) are more capable and competent than you know
Fighting about it doesn’t help
Our younger dog, Shiva, got lost last May.
Like, really lost.
One minute she was home hanging out with family friends, and the next, she’d darted out the back door and into the middle of the woods just before sunset. You see, in July 2020 we moved from San Diego to a rather rural and rugged town in the mountains about an hour away. Shiva’s sudden decision to dart off in the middle of a family gathering was the first time we’d really had occasion to consider just how risky life could be for a young pup on the loose.
The night she ran off, my husband and some friends combed the woods immediately outside the house. Thinking that a scared Shiva would undoubtedly run towards anyone who could call out the right name. This was the first of many misunderstandings that would get corrected along the way.
After the first night, we were even more distraught. Hearing coyotes howling throughout the night didn’t assuage our fears either. But as the initial energy and excitement waned, we suddenly realized that we had absolutely no idea what to do (beyond the most basic initial steps of putting up a few posters in town).
We took turns staying home and driving slowly and aimlessly along old farm roads surrounding town. The bad thing about living in the middle of nowhere was that Shiva could have gone in literally any direction. As we went to bed on the second night without her, with more coyotes howling in the distance, we grew more hopeless and sad that our sweet girl would never return.
The next morning, we got a text from someone who’d seen our poster. “You should call Babs Fry,” it said, and added a local phone number. Thinking Babs was likely a pet psychic or Ace Ventura-like character, we were quickly proven wrong. Indeed, Google showed her to a be well-recognized dog tracker whose non profit is dedicated to reuniting lost dogs with their families (see https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-01-09/jamul-tracker-has-helped-hundreds-of-families-reunite-with-their-runaway-dogs).
Her knowledge and positive attitude would eventually prove instrumental.
Over the course of the next three weeks, we would be pulled along an emotional journey that eventually led to the return of our sweet little Shiva, truly our god(dess) of destruction, and taught us several important lessons that we still carry with us:
Lesson 1: It’s not personal
When Shiva ran off, we knew that she was in a panic. But as more time passed, we started to get this feeling like “maybe she just doesn’t want to come come.” Babs forced us out of our ego-based perspective. The minute Shiva was in the wild, she went into survival mode, including regaining instincts telling her that humans were likely a threat.
This meant that Shiva simply wasn’t capable of trusting that the voices she might have heard were trying to help her. Instead, they warned of danger, and likely drove her further away. Shiva wasn’t being emotional about it…she was simply doing everything she could to survive.
Once the emotional sting of a presumed rejection passed, it was much easier to process and the focus could be on how to get Shiva back…not how much it hurt.
This is a great reminder for everyone we encounter in our daily lives. They are living in their “wild,” and usually carry with them untold tons of detritus and emotional baggage accumulated along the way. So if someone is giving you shit, have the grace to presume that it’s not about you, and might actually be about something completely unrelated.
Lesson 2: Keep it simple stupid
The first real course correction from Babs concerned our poster. Our first pre-Babs poster had several pictures against a neutral background, a discussion of where and when we lost her, identifying characteristics…literally anything we could think of. Babs’ directive was much simpler (see the revised poster above):
A clear picture of Shiva against a white background
Big bold red letters/numbers with our phone number
A simple phrase “DO NOT CHASE”
That’s it.
And guess what…the morning after we posted these revised flyers in town, we got a call from a neighbor a few miles away, saying that she had seen Shiva in her pasture just that morning.
You see, anyone who might have seen Shiva didn’t need to know where she was originally lost, when she was lost, what she liked or disliked, or anything else. All they needed to know was our phone number and not to chase after her (see above).
Sometimes (maybe almost always) simpler is better. Try to make things easier, rather than more complicated.
Lesson 3: People want to help
That first woman who called to report a Shiva sighting was our first glimmer of hope in 48 hours. It was the first call of many, and over the course of the next few weeks, our neighbors, friends, and strangers all contributed to the cause.
Some days, the fire fighters would call saying they’d seen her on the way to rescue some injured hikers in the backcountry.
Camp directors and employees would call saying that Shiva had been walking along the road and scampered off as they drove by.
Homeowners called to say that they’d seen her on the way home.
Soon, we were able to compile these sightings and see that Shiva was generally hanging around the same 5-mile area, largely going around in circles, likely in search of food and shelter.
These sightings not only showed us where we might be likely to find Shiva, they also provided reassurances that she was alive. The hope that our neighbors’ calls provided was just as important. But if we had never reached out with the right message, their valuable knowledge and observations would have been completely lost.
I know this to be true in our everyday life too. People want to help you. Sometimes it’s a matter of finding the right people, and putting the request in the right way…but if people are able to help, they likely will.
Lesson 4: People (and you) are more capable than you believe
All told, Shiva survived for exactly three weeks in the woods. I would never have believed it until it happened. But in retrospect, this makes complete sense.
Shiva was skinny and dehydrated when she eventually returned, and her hunger is what eventually led to our reunion, but even still, she held her own in the California backcountry after four years of being spoiled by two gay men. She was a lot stronger than I thought.
This is the same with everyone. Living beings (including YOU) are much more strong and resilient than we like to believe. And what’s even crazier…sometimes survival can inspire and ignite new skills and capabilities. Lean into new experiences and don’t second guess yourself or others. Where there’s a will there is most certainly a way.
Lesson 5: Fighting about it doesn’t help
When emotions are high and we’re feeling a bit frayed at the edges, little things start to feel like big things, and big things feel like they’re worth fighting for. Several times over the course of Shiva’s vision quest, my husband and I found ourselves in the middle of an intense discussion or argument about one thing or the other.
Even though fighting or arguing might feel empowering and exhilarating, it comes with a nasty downside…exhaustion. And in the end, fighting rarely produces any kind of true solution to the problem presented.
So if you’re trying to actually get something done, put the emotional response to the side for a moment, and consider what the productive solution looks like that will move the ball down the field.
So what happened?
Babs set us up with two food-baited traps and hunting cameras that we could monitor remotely, and had us revisiting the places where Shiva had been sighted to try to lure her back with food. Every morning before sunrise and every evening before sunset, one of us would go check the traps to see if she’d been captured, and to refresh the food so that the scent would draw her in.
We repeated this pattern for 18 days. And then…
One night, we caught her on camera drawn to the food to a place where she’d been spotted several times before. She didn’t trust the traps, but we knew that she would be there again. So the next afternoon, I went out to bait the traps again and headed home.
By the time I pulled the truck into the driveway of our house 20 minutes later, we were already getting notifications from the remote cameras that she was hanging around the traps and the food. I decided to try driving in her direction to see if I could make a sighting.
Not more than a mile from where she’d appeared on camera, I saw her slinking along the side of the road looking skeptically at my truck.
By this time, knowing that she had no way to trust me, I took it slow. I put the truck in park, put my window down, and started talking to her very gently. There was a glimmer of recognition, but she did not know exactly who I was. In spite of her doubts about me, she was clearly trusting of the rotisserie chicken in the truck’s back seat, and when I opened the door, she hopped right in (but continued to look at me very skeptically).
Soon, she was back enjoying the company of her big/little brother, and she’s never been off leash since then.