Lucy Update, Pictures, and Deflyering Efforts

Lucy has settled in pretty nicely. Her energy levels are surprisingly high already, though not quite what they were before her walkabout adventure.

We found a tick on her. So now the list of ill effects Lucy has suffered from her month-long vacation in the District wilds includes two items:

• Lost 15% of her body weight (8 lbs.)
  
• A tick. One.
  

Sooooo, yeah, we think we're pretty lucky.

Also, I posted to Picasa some pictures taken since she got home. You can view the gallery here.

And lastly, we have been trying to take down all the fliers we put up over the course of the last month. It's going to take a few weeks of course, and we might miss some as we go. So we're asking for two favors from people:

1. If you see any fliers, take them down (and please let us know where you took them down from).
   
2. If you're free next Saturday, 3/14, come down and help us deflyer some areas. (Noon, at Carter Barron Amphitheater parking lot.)
   

And once again, thank you everyone who has so generously helped us in the course of this ridiculously difficult month. Special thanks to Steph, Lisa, Daphne, Donna, Nancy, Laura Totis & Chewy the Wonder Dog, and Maurice & Pollie. Thanks as well to everyone who posted fliers for Lucy, including Michele & Dave, Jill, Catherine, Alycia, Will the Wonder Lawyer, Fran, and Katie. HUGE thanks to everyone who spotted Lucy and took the time to call us. I'm sure I'm forgetting others, and to you I apologize. There were so many who contacted us, encouraged us, wished us well, and helped us, that I doubt I can remember to thank everyone individually. But know that your contribution, however small, helped us enormously.

Bah, More Help Needed

We are going to spend the next few weeks taking down all the fliers we posted during our Lucy Search Extravaganza.  We could definitely use help doing it, though.

We'll be out there this Sunday, and next Saturday if anyone would like to join us.  This task should be a lot more happy than the previous gatherings.  We will also probably bring Lucy along for part of it (how long we keep her out there will depend on her stamina), so if you want to meet the dog who spawned such an effort, come on down.  We will plan to meet at noon at the Carter Barron Amphitheater parking lot again (it made for a good meeting place the last few times), so anyone who is willing to help tear down some fliers, please come on by.

Also, we got a call from the DC department of general services (or whatever it's called) today.  They're going to fine us $75 for every poster, but at least they're giving us until the end of the month.  (I still don't know how they can fine us for posting on utility poles, but we were planning on taking them all down anyway, so hopefully it's a moot question.)  So we could definitely use help with this.  Even if you can't come out this weekend or next, whenever you see a Lucy flier, please take it down.  Much obliged.

Doing Fine

So the vet thinks Lucy is in remarkably good health, all things considered.  Normal temperature, normal heart and lung action, normal everything.  She lost 8 pounds (was 55 lbs. before going on walkabout, now 47 lbs.), and we won't receive word about internal parasites until tomorrow.  But otherwise, Lucy is well.

Lucy is Home!

Sarah nabbed her this morning around 6:30.

She went to check on a trap we set out last night, and saw Lucy inside the grounds of the embassy next door.  So she laid down near the place in the fence where Lucy could squeeze out, put out some chicken, and waited.

Lucy eventually came over to sniff, and as soon as she realized this body was one of her people, she ignored the chicken and commenced a thorough licking of Sarah's face.

The rest is fairly unimportant.  She's home.  She's incredibly dirty.  My white dog is really a gray dog right now.  But she seems completely unscratched; I haven't found a single wound on her.  She's skinny -- she definitely lost weight, but not nearly as much as I would have thought, for having been lost a month.  (To the day today, it is one month.)  She drank roughly half a gallon of water after getting home.  I'm not exaggerating.  Maybe more than half a gallon.

Now we're waiting to get a vet appointment to get her checked out.  Great day in the morning my Lucy is home.  What a good feeling.

We Saw Our Own Damn Dog

Yep, you read that correctly.  Sarah and I both saw Lucy today.  We don't have her in our hands yet, but we were close.  So very close.

Let me back up a little.  I promised to give more details about this embassy sighting, and it leads directly to today's excitement.

DC Animal Control called me last night to say that a stray dog, white, same collar as Lucy, was spotted behind an embassy on Massachusetts Ave.  The dog matched the description of Lucy on the lost dog report they have, so someone over there put two and two together, and called me.  Apparently, two Animal Control officers responded yesterday, but the dog ran away from them and they didn't want to give chase because the area is near the Rock Creek Parkway.  So the plan was for them to call me today before they headed back out, so I could go with them and try to coax the dog out if it turned out to be Lucy.

The plan went slightly awry, but that was harmless error.  A nice Animal Control officer named Ted went to the area today, the dog wouldn't let him get anywhere near it, so he called me.  Sarah and I came down, met Ted at the Metro station, and he took us over to the area.  

Behind a row of embassies on Massachusetts Ave. is a strip of land; it runs down a steep hill, then levels off briefly before running into an offshoot of the Rock Creek Parkway.  It is not a terribly large area, and a dog in there has nowhere to go until late at night when traffic on the parkway dissipates.

So.  We traipsed around a bit with Ted, calling Lucy's name.  Within about 10 minutes, I caught sight of a white(ish) tail moving through the trees, away from me.  Shortly after, Sarah, lower down the hill, saw Lucy.  Thus began the most frustrating afternoon in recent memory.  To shorten a long story, in the course of the next hour and a half, we each saw Lucy, quite clearly, 4-5 times.  Each.  The nearest I got was probably about 30 feet away.  We made eye contact, she turned and went the other way.

I tried calling her name and issuing commands, like "come;" I tried talking quietly, sweetly, whistling, making play noises, using her various nicknames, all for naught.  Clearly she has gone into whatever survival mode they go into when dogs have been on the loose for a few weeks.  She doesn't seem to really recognize me or Sarah, and treats us as she treats all humans:  things to be avoided.

So that's the bad news.  She's completely unresponsive to me or Sarah.  Which is so incredibly frustrating, because we were so close, and we kept seeing her.  But the good news is that she clearly has made this area something of a home base.  Her tracks were all over the place, and readily visible thanks to the snow and mud.  We could see the track she had worn along the top of the hill, behind the embassies, and down the hill and back around.  There's a loop she has worn into the ground.  She has been here for days, and hopefully will stay here until we get her fuzzy butt into a trap.

I'm still a little stunned.  I can't believe I saw her little Goose face so close, and she wouldn't even respond to me.

In any case, we set out some feeding stations, and set up a trap.  There is pretty much an entire rotisserie chicken there (minus the bones of course), plus about 5 pounds of dog food, a few cans of cat food (which is really stinky, so attracts dogs well), and a few bowls of water.

SIDENOTE:  Sarah came up with a brilliant idea.  Because it's supposed to go down to 11 degrees tonight, we were worried about all the available water freezing, and Goose not getting anything to drink.  So Sarah bought some of those adhesive, muscle pain relief, heating pads (click here to see what I mean), and stuck them to the bottom of the plastic water bowls, so the heat would keep the water from freezing (hopefully) for 12 hours.  Fine work, Sarah.

The hope is that at the very least Lucy will get some good meals, and some solid nutrition in her body.  Hopefully she'll think that this area is just brimming with free food, so there's no reason to move on to another area.  And eventually, as we reduce the number of feeding stations, the only place she'll find food is inside the trap.

PLEASE NOTE:  If you are anywhere near this area, please DO NOT go there in search of Lucy.  Do not try to approach her, do not try to do anything anywhere in the vicinity.  The worst thing that could happen right now is for well-intentioned people (including myself) to drive Lucy out of this area and into the unknown.  As long as she's sticking to this spot, we want her there.  We'll eventually get her into a trap.  So for everyone wanting to help us locate Lucy, please avoid this area of woods behind the embassies on Massachusetts Ave.  Consult the map if you need to be sure.

Media Exposure

OH, one more thing I forgot to mention in my last post.  (Two things, really, but somehow conceptually related in my mind.)

Jule Banville posted an update to her previous article about Lucy.  If you haven't read the original, go here.  And in case you were unaware, the City Paper also published this article in their print edition, last Thursday.  If you're in the DC area, go pick up a copy before they disappear, and before the new issue comes on this Thursday.

For the new article, click here.  This one is also well written and enjoyable.  (And we especially appreciate the mention of our flyering party this past Saturday.)  Jule, if only I sat on the Pulitzer board . . .

Second, I received a call from a Washington Post reporter.  She is doing a story on the Find Toto service.  Three people in her office, including one of the editors, had received Find Toto calls regarding Lucy, so that led her to me.  Even though the article will focus on Find Toto, I'm hoping it will mention Lucy prominently.  She even asked me for a photo of Lucy.  This would, obviously, be great exposure.

And as I've said before, when we eventually find Lucy, it'll be because someone who knows her story calls us, or happens to coax her into their house with a hot dog.  So disseminating the information is really our highest priority here.

Weekend Activities

First, a big thanks to Will, and Michele & Dave, for coming out to help us on Saturday.  In particular, I want to point out that Michele and Dave drove down from Baltimore just to help us hang fliers.  That's remarkable, and shames me and my paltry generosity.

And of course, thanks also to the usual crew (Lisa, Daphne, Donna, Nancy, et al).  It's wonderful and amazing how much more gets done than when it's just Sarah and myself.

So fliers were hung.  Helicopters were flown.  Woods were hiked.  

The extraordinary National Park Service chopper pilots were specifically on the lookout for Lucy this weekend.  We appreciate this greatly.  Now, with the snow on the ground, I imagine spotting her will be more difficult by a power of ten, but at least the weather is predicted to warm up this week.

At least the snow allowed us to see tracks.  Unfortunately none of them belonged to Lucy.

I also hiked clear across Rock Creek Park to get an idea of how Lucy might be traversing it.  The bad news is that there are a million ways for her to cross the park, and no bottlenecks where we could place a trap.  But this also means that it's entirely feasible for her to cross back and forth in a day, possibly multiple times.

We also started getting some harassing phone calls.  Probably a group of teenagers just being punks.  "I have your dog.  I want $10,000."  "I found your dog, it's dead."  And so on.  What I don't get is where's the entertainment value in that?  I mean, if you are a cognitively challenged jackass, I guess tricking someone into believing you might be funny, but they couldn't even pull that off.  So why keep calling back?  Even if they're just mean and enjoy upsetting people, they weren't getting very far with that either, so, again, why keep calling back?  I don't get where this becomes fun for a person.

Ah well, in any event, this coming week we'll try to stake-out some of the Lucy sightings during trash nights.  We'll see if she makes a reappearance.  Also, there's a thing with a stray dog that was seen at an embassy, but I don't want to go into detail until, well, until I have details.  Which will be tomorrow.  But I'm keeping hopeful that this one is Lucy and not some other stray white dog with a similar collar.  That would just suck.