Chips Ahoy! at Sasha's Pet Resort

Sasha's Pet Resort

Yesterday began as most of my workdays do.  Get the lights on at 7:00 am, coffee poured, our overnight boarders roused and shown to the doggy door.  Then a routine review of our corporate bank account and daycare schedule for that day as our morning dogs begin to filter in. 

The highlight of this morning was to be the arrival of a transient guest from Tennessee.  His owners were driving out for a mini-vacation to have lunch with their son who had just recently become a police officer in the nearby city of Bellevue, Washington. Just a one-day stay. 

The dog was probably the most gorgeous German Shepherd I had ever seen!  

Sasha was of the same breed, so I have a bit of a soft spot for these Adonis-like canines, though they are often unfairly stigmatized by images of civil rights protesters being set upon by their snarling fangs.  I don’t believe any single breed of a dog is inherently bad though I do believe some breeds are more prone to behaviors that are labeled as bad.  And certainly a GSB, if not properly cared for and trained, could fall into some of these bad habits.  But I adore the breed and was looking forward to having him here for the day.  To protect his anonymity let’s just call him Rogue for the purpose of this blog.

But a quick temp test before Rogue could check-in.  He sailed through with no issues or growls.  Yes!  A perfect gentleman!  And on top of it, as I quickly learned, he already knew how to use our doggy door which leads from our large indoor room to our dog run and bathroom stop outdoors.   

So well behaved, understands protocol, looks like a Hollywood athlete, well socialized and doesn’t snarl or bite!  Rogue was going to be an easy first date.  After his daddy departed, he gravitated immediately to the outdoor dog run where he sniffed up some previous visitors while I checked in our morning arrivals.  Dropped off at Sasha’s as mom or dad catch the light rail to work in the a.m. and then to pick back up after 5 pm or so.

So imagine my horror when a man comes frantically to our front door and shouts: “A German Shepherd just escaped your pen…he just took off down the street!”  After six years in business, we’ve only had one escapee.  Now apparently two!  How he executed it I didn’t know, but that wasn’t important at the moment.  What was critical was his direction and location.  To that end, I jumped in my car and took off south towards Marymoor Park, a 640-acre in-city park with its own 40-acre off-leash dog meadow. “Doggy Disneyland” as local dog owners refer to it.  I knew our only other escapee, a beautiful Husky, three years earlier escaped to the park twice.  As good fortune might have it, nature is our closest ally in this lost dog search.  With their phenomenal sense of smell, once an escaped dog is on the lam, they test the air for the scent of their many canine allies and head that direction.  Might as well try it.  A bit more analytically verified than the other 359 directions that can be followed.  So I drive through this mammoth venue asking dog walkers if they’ve seen a shepherd.  Many no’s. At the same time I continually scan the multiple ball fields, climbing rock, concert grounds, velodrome and remote-control airfield for any signs of a large canine on the loose.  I can’t find Rogue anywhere.   

My wife the RN, was off work yesterday so I called her at home from the car to let her know we had an urgency in progress.  An escaped dog.  Truly, one of my worst nightmares of the year so far.  She hurried down to watch our other dogs and called me as I continued my travel up and down the Redmond roads.  “Where are the little dogs?” she asked.  Two of our boarders were these adorable multi-colored dachshunds, one shorthair and one long.  Like twins tethered at the hip they are small enough to easily hide in multiple spaces and one has to be careful not to trip over them inadvertently.  

I return to Sasha’s and I too am unable to locate the duo-dachshunds.  A visit out to the dog run and I discover the bent chain-link section at the foot of our fence.  Large enough for a German Shepherd and small enough for two dachshunds.  I now have three lost dogs! Hopelessness and despair spar for the room’s oxygen.  I don’t imagine the rug rats will survive for long in Redmond traffic.  This officially becomes the worst day of my life.  A genuine nightmare for any doggy daycare or kennel owner. 

Despondent, I’m ready to post a lost dog message on the many neighborhood web sites.  But decide instead to drive one more time through the Marymoor Park area.  But only two blocks away from Sasha’s a pottery-maker came outside and told me a lady across the street had found two mostly white dachshunds and scooped them up and drove them to a vet locally.  

I thanked him profusely and headed off excitedly to the vet hospital around the corner which I assumed had the pups in their possession.  I can retrieve them and then continue the search for Rogue.  Bad assumption.  This apparently wasn’t where the two were brought.  That’s when the receptionist mentioned (talk about serendipity!) that there had been a German Shepherd turned in by the maintenance crew of Marymoor Park and that they were with him at their plant in the park.  And meanwhile we received a phone call from the parents of the dynamic duo saying the dachshunds had their chips read by a vet hospital in Redmond Ridge and we could retrieve the pups there.  And the parents were not in a happy mood!

But suddenly, it was as if all the pieces were coming together as if so intended.  And our worst nightmare was over before noon!  When hours earlier I didn’t know if I’d be sleeping that night in my own bed or crawling around outside with my high-beam flashlight chasing down shadows and nightmares.

Which brings me to the entire moral of this story:  Chip your animals!  It takes but minutes, costs little, and assures that your dog will find you when it’s been lost or stolen.  We were blessed yesterday because both the dachshunds had been chipped.  The German Shepherd had no tags or chips.  A beautiful animal like that can be saved through bona fide identification such as a chip.  So chips ahoy and keep your animals well connected to you! You’ll thank yourself later.