John and Mary Rueckert's Heart O'Gold Shetland Sheepdogs


			(By John Rueckert) When Virginia Creasy sent me her story on Rory she told me that she wished she could convey the shear helplessness and frustration of the situation more graphically. To say that finding Rory was like searching for a needle in a haystack would be an understatement. The area in which he was lost was 20,000 acres of wilderness timberland bordered on three sides by two-lane country road. Across these three roads were parcels of more than 10,000 acres each. So, depending on how far he roamed the potential search area was as much as 50,000 acres of virgin timberland. The only road running through the 20,000 acres he was in was a 2-1/2 mile long gravel road named Ed Jones Road. This road is remote and does not even have a bridge across what I consider to be a fairly substantial creek. You must ford this creek at 1 to 2 foot depth (depending on weather conditions) in order to get from one end of Ed Jones Road to the other. There are only about a dozen homes on the length of Ed Jones Road and all but two of these are along the first Ľ mile at either end. So, there are only two homes in the middle 2-mile stretch where Rory was lost. This did not offer much potential for sightings, except for the fact that it was hunting season and the area was very active in this respect. We were also quite lucky in that it snowed three times during the 10 days he was lost (unusual for Virginia) making tracking a possibility and the brush was down due to the time of year. If Rory had run away during the Summer I'm not sure we would have even known where to look or set our traps. The only way to effectively cover the area was by foot. Ed Creasy, Henry Smith, and I were each logging 15 to 20 miles a day walking the area. So, we really got a lot of exercise over the 10-day period. We carried cell phones with us to communicate and so we could respond quickly if there was a sighting. Virginia made several tours a day through the area searching and talking to people to spread the word, but for the most part she was our check in point and stayed near the phone in case someone called to say they had seen him. Another thing that was lucky about the time of the year was that it was easy to get time off from work during the holidays to search. We started every day at sunrise and searched all day, each day, until it got dark. This included canceling our Christmas visit to my families' house that year. We searched all day Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year's Eve. I felt really sorry for Virginia Creasy's mother who had flown in from Texas. No one involved had much of a holiday that year, but there was a comradery in the cause at hand and a feeling of accomplishment when it ended successfully. Our attempt to locate a trap through sources such as Game Wardens and Animal Control agencies was frustrating. I don't know if it was because of hunting season, or what, but no traps were easily available. After spending the better part of a day trying unsuccessfully to find a trap, I decided I could make one quicker. This is what lead to the idea for my 'Crate Trap', or what Virginia Creasy calls the 'Have a Heart Trap'. My thought was that a dog that has been crate trained is much more likely to enter a familiar looking and smelling crate than an alien looking commercial trap. Also, the crate trap can be built in 3 hours from materials on hand (without damaging the crate) and can be duplicated, based on how many crates you have available, to increase your chances of success by setting multiple traps. I have made my 'Crate Trap' design available on this site, free of charge, for private use by people with lost dogs. This was a heart wrenching experience that we hope we never have to go through again. Rory is a sweet dog who warms the hearts of every one he meets. As of this writing he is four years old. It has been two years since his ordeal and he seems quite content to live the soft life at home. Although Virginia Creasy says he never quite learned to 'COME' in obedience class, I feel that those classes may have saved his life because when it counted he did 'STAY'. « Part 1 «
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