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If your family dog ran off on its first camping trip, how far would you go to get them back? Scott and Shelby Prue had to ask themselves this question repeatedly on a trip to West Virginia when Holly, their Labrador mix, took off into the forest. Things quickly got weird, then they got scary.
Editor’s Note: Transcriptions of episodes of the Outside Podcast are created with a mix of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain some grammatical errors or slight deviations from the audio.
Peter Frick-Wright: This is The Outside Podcast.
This story doesn’t need much setup from me. It’s a wild ride, and it comes from producer Sarah Vitak.
Sarah Vitak: I am a dog person. Arguably, that is an understatement.
I had a dog-obsessed childhood. My bookshelf was all Julie of the Wolves, Jack London, and Gary Paulson.
I told anyone that would listen that I was going to compete in the Iditarod some day. Which was met with a lot of blank stares and the occasional laugh because I lived in Southern California, and most people had never even heard of the Iditarod.
But to me the long distance dog sled race epitomized everything I love about dogs.
I love how they give everything, to whatever they’re doing. How loyal and motivated they are once you earn their trust. They will, quite literally, run themselves to death for you. They’re just the best teammates you can possibly have.
I think they bring out the best in me as well. It’s easy for me to mirror their whole-hearted affection. To drop any pretense or ego. And to give everything I have right back.
I did not end up running the iditarod. But I did move to a little town in Sweden the moment I graduated from college to work at a dog sledding kennel. And then I moved back a month later, because Sweden was not a good situation. But that’s a different story.
All of which is to say I’m no stranger to making questionable choices when it comes to dogs. You can devote your life to them. And it’s a good life.
But recently I heard a story about the lengths some people went to for their dog. And the more they told me, the more I couldn’t stop asking myself, would I do this? Would I go this far?
I’m just not sure.
Shelby Prue: Um, yeah, so I’m Shelby Prue. Uh, I am a dog lover and an event producer.
Sarah: It all started in October 2020. Shelby Prue and her then-fiance Scott had decided they were ready to add another member to their family. By which I mean, they wanted another dog.
They already had a little black chihuahua mix named Sully. But they wanted a playmate for him during the long stretches they spent camping in their sprinter van.
Almost immediately a dog named Holly came up for adoption. She was a black lab mix that had been removed from an abusive home in Tennessee and she was being fostered by one of Shelby’s coworkers. She had some behavioral issues, but Shelby and Scott felt ready to take that on.
It was love even before first sight.
Shelby: From the first time I saw a picture of Holly I knew I wanted her. She just like was staring into the camera with these just beautiful eyes and I thought, oh my gosh, you can see this dog’s soul. Like she’s perfect.
Sarah: Shelby is a self described bubbly and outgoing person. And she was working at an art gallery in New York City at the time.
They made plans to meet Holly and make sure that she got along with Sully, who was occasionally a bit reactive.
Scott: it’s definitely hit or miss with him with dogs. And they hit it off right away.
Sarah: That’s Scott. He is a software engineer. And a self described extremely logical person who loved the scientific method from a young age.
Scott: I really loved the idea that like we could figure everything out through science. We just haven’t yet
Sarah: Before the adoption, they brought Sully to meet Holly. Holly was small for a lab, only about 35 pounds, and her scraggly fur was the kind of pitch black that is hard to photograph because it just shows up as a dark void in the picture. It matched her personality, though. Holly moved like a shadow: skittish and sticking to walls, corners, or the floor. Hiding underneath furniture whenever she could manage. She was clearly smart but constantly on high alert.
When they got off leash at the dog park Holly immediately went and hid in the corner. Sully played with other dogs but would go to check on her and try to coax her to play.
Scott: And it was almost kind of like Sully was showing her that everything could be okay.
Sarah: And just like that Holly was a member of the family.
They picked her up a day before a long weekend of camping in West Virginia. They only had her for one night in the city and she was clearly on edge.
Shelby: She did not wanna be around anybody. when we would walk on the sidewalk, if there was somebody coming towards us, she would like go into the road to try to avoid people.
Sarah: The timing for the camping trip seemed perfect actually. They figured it would calm her nerves to be out of the city. Plus, it felt like a good intro to their lifestyle. Shelby, Scott, and Sully had lived full time out of the van for more than a year before moving to New York City. If Holly wasn’t up for #vanlife then it might not be such a good fit after all.
Scott: We do kind of get out in the woods. And so we just wanted to make sure that she was, uh, like into that vibe, I guess you could say.
Sarah: On Thursday afternoon they packed up the dogs and made the 5 hour drive to Wardensville, West Virginia. They normally liked to set up camp and get a lay of the land before sunset. But this time, as they parked and built a campfire, all they knew was that their campsite had been pretty deep in the woods along a gravel road.
The next morning they leashed up the dogs and took them out for a long hike on the spiderweb of trails around the campsite. They were in a big valley and it was peak foliage season. The forest seemed to go on forever. There was even a hunting lodge nearby.
At the end of the hike they went back to the van. Holly seemed relaxed.
Shelby: She was great. Everything was fantastic.
We had just finished the home. I’m still holding her leash. We had just jumped into the van and.
And then you hear this gunshot off in the distance and like a crack, like Holly ripped her leash out of my hand and was just gone, like took off running faster than I’ve ever seen a dog run in my life.
Sarah: Instinctively they both ran after her.
Shelby: We followed her probably a quarter of a mile Just bolting us all running and that’s when we both realized we’re like. That’s exactly what you’re not supposed to do when a dog is running away.
And so we both stopped. At that point I realized I had kind of forgotten what Sully was doing. I looked down, he had followed us the entire way, thank goodness. I was like at least we didn’t lose two dogs at that point.
Sarah: Holly ran, like a speeding shadow, over a ridge. Her red leash dragging behind her. Out of sight.
Shelby: and that was like when it got really very real and very very scary.
Number one, we lost her. Number two, we did everything wrong and chased her off. Number three, we don’t even know, like, where she’s gonna go, and we’ve never been here before, like, I don’t know what’s over that ridge. It could be a highway, for all I know, or it could just be a thousand miles of forest.
Sarah: Scott was so upset he’s basically blocked out any memory of the actual moment they lost Holly.
Scott: I guess that might just be my brain kind of trying to forget that piece of it. But I do remember that once she got away from us, she just was like fully running like she didn’t look back or anything like that.
Sarah: They went back to the van to regroup and started making a plan. They had never lost a dog before. They had never even known anyone who had lost a dog before. And to make matters worse they didn’t really have a relationship with Holly. They certainly hadn’t worked on recall with her. She probably wouldn’t have come when they called in the best of circumstances, much less in the middle of a forest she had never been to.
Shelby: Immediately it felt just like, oh, I was dumb. I cannot believe I felt so confident that, like, oh, we’ll take her out of the city, we’ll go camping, it’s gonna be great for her, you know. And then in that moment that I watched her run away over that ridge I was like, oh no I’m, never getting this dog back.
Sarah: They had some friends that were on their way to come meet them for the weekend. So Shelby asked if they could make a pitstop to print some lost dog posters.
Shelby: Maybe like two after two hours after she was gone We already had a lost dog poster and then we spent the rest of the day with our friends just kind of, like, saying sorry a million times for ruining their camping weekend and went in separate directions and handed out flyers every single place. Like, we covered the whole town, thinking at that point, like, maybe someone could just, like, grab her leash, you know? And, like someone’s gonna trot her right back to us. It’ll be fine. Like everything’s gonna be okay.
Sarah: As they handed out fliers a lot of people were helpful and positive. But they also met a lot of people who were not so positive.
Shelby: It was just you had that one percent of people who were like, she’s dead You’ll never see her again. She’s run back to tennessee. Oh a hunter will shoot her if he sees her and I was just like all of that was definitely like just this terrible nagging feeling
Scott: In my mind that was the first like real big. like what I would call like dose of reality where I, like, I was trying to be hopeful as much as I could be, but that really like struck me as like, Oh, wow. Maybe these people are right. Like, maybe she’s like 10, tens of miles away now and there’s nothing that I can really do, cause like which direction would she have gone, how would I know? And we were in a little valley, that area was kind of tight knit, but we were connected to woods that went hundreds of miles.
Sarah: They spent the rest of the weekend with their friends posting fliers and hiking out to look for Holly. Shelby even walked up to several rural houses and knocked on the doors.
Luckily no one came out with a shotgun.
But, unluckily, no one seemed to have seen Holly.
Shelby: Then on Sunday evening our friends had to go home. So that’s when it kind of like set in because that’s when we were supposed to go home, too. But like we’re gonna have to stay here now?
Sarah: They had a decision to make. Were they going to go home as planned? Or were they going to stay at a campsite in West Virginia looking for a dog they barely knew?
I try to put myself in that position. Would I stay? I lean towards kind of probably yes? But for Shelby and Scott there wasn’t even a question. They were staying. And not only were they staying, they were going to ramp up their dog-finding game.
Shelby: I think at that point though, like I had already made the decision like it was really weighing on me that like I adopted this dog and then immediately like put her in danger.
Sarah: The woods are a dangerous place for a sweet, friendly black lab. Would she starve out there? Or be eaten by coyotes? Or would her leash catch and trap her, or a hunter mistake her for a black bear? The possibilities haunted Shelby.
Shelby: I had already made the decision like I would give up pretty much everything that we had at that point to stay out there.
Sarah: Not everyone has the ability to extend their camping trip to indulge their guilty dog-owner conscience, but Scott and Shelby did. In fact, they already knew they could live out of the van. Scott could work remotely. And Shelby was supposed to be back in person at the art gallery, but her coworkers were nice about it. They said they’d make it work.
And if they were going to invest their time, they were going to invest in some equipment. So they drove out to the nearest Dick’s Sporting Goods and bought a couple trail cameras.
Shelby: So I kind of did some, like, brief, like, animal tracking research just, like, on my phone on this very spotty internet out in the campground.
And so, uh, a lot of, you know, what you see is animals take the path of least resistance and animals are going to want to find water.
Sarah: They went out to where they had last seen Holly and tried to find some good spots for the cameras. They followed the guidelines as best they could, but to some extent they also just had to trust their gut and go on instincts. It was a huge rat’s nest of trails and a lot of forest.
Scott: I think it was like the chance of us putting a camera both like vertically and horizontally aimed so that it would like catch a dog in this like giant wilderness we’re in was a little bit like insane to me, honestly. And so I was like, the chance of us catching her on this camera must be very small.
Sarah: It felt like putting up cameras hoping to catch a glimpse of Bigfoot. But if bigfoot was a tenth the size, and all black. So frankly maybe they would have had a better shot with Bigfoot.
Scott: Like we’re one species and we’re hunting another species now.
Sarah: And that was exactly what this would turn into: a tracking and hunting mission. In fact, the very next day they were put into contact with a trio of professional dog trackers and trappers.
Bob: My name is Bob Swenson. I’m a local trapper and tracker in Baltimore, but I go all over. They were just so caring about Holly and they just, they would do anything to get her home. You could just, you could tell by talking to them.
Sarah: Together with their newly formed Holly-tracking SWAT team they set up a game plan. Their first objective was to figure out where Holly was. And they were told first and foremost to stop going out into the woods and calling her name. This would be their first of many lessons in lost dog psychology.
Bob: So usually when a dog gets out, they go into something called survival mode and survival mode. Basically they’re acting like a feral wild animal, uh, and they would do anything to survive.
Sarah: Bob told me that frequently he advises people to stop going out and yelling the dog’s name and they’ll return immediately, like sometimes within 30 minutes. Having people out in the woods yelling just pushes them further into survival mode.
Bob: So they’re going to avoid people, noises, movements, um, any attempt to catch them.
Sarah: This was bad news for Shelby and Scott, who realized they had been doing exactly the wrong thing for 3 days straight. But it wasn’t all bad. The trackers liked where they had placed the trail cams. They just had to hope she showed up.
Twice a day they hiked out to get the sim cards. And every new video was a blast of excitement and hope. And then a let down when the footage turned out to be a raccoon or a skunk or this one very fat housecat.
But then, a few days after setting up the cameras, they were looking at one of the videos, and they caught a glimpse of something.
Scott: We were like, wait, what was it that moved? Was it like a leaf or something? And then we like watched it again and saw her like leash drag away out of the frame. And so we were like, Oh wow. Okay. So like she is out here and we, there’s a reason to keep going.
I kind of felt this level of like excitement that like all those people that said she went back to Tennessee don’t know what they’re talking about.
Sarah: It felt like a small miracle that they had picked the right spot for the trail cam. And then they got a shot with her in it.
A black and white night vision video. Her eyes were just glowing orbs on a pointy black face. She looked sort of demonic.
But Shelby and Scott couldn’t have been happier. They shared the good news with their dog hunting mentors. Now that they knew where Holly was they figured it would be easy to just go out and get her. But that’s not really how it works. Because Holly was still in survival mode. She would have to be trapped.
Scott: I don’t remember the time between me seeing the first video and realizing, okay, we’re trapping her, but when they said that to us, I kind of had this like thing wash over me of like, Oh no, like if we’re trapping her, like, what is our relationship going to look like? Is she gonna like, know that it was me? And like, when I go to get her out of whatever trap it is, is she gonna associate me with all of that scary danger and like, not want to be part of our family anymore? I remember having real conversations with Shelby of like, is the, like, it might be the best thing for her to be rehomed if we ever get her back
Sarah: It was a heartbreaking thought. Whether they got her back or not, they had lost their dog.
But, for now all they could do was take things one step at a time.
The first step to trapping a dog, is to get them eating consistently in the same place, every day. And this is when Scott and Shelby kind of went all out. They started putting a bowl of food at the intersection where they saw her on the camera.
Shelby: Like a big bowl of food at that intersection and then we would go like What are they Hansel and Gretel and drop kibble like we would hike out and drop kibble like on all the trails leading to it.
Sarah: They also tried to make the area as interesting as possible so she would stay around. They took walks nearby every day so she would smell them and Sully.
Shelby: Every single day I would go to this combination gas station grocery store and buy, uh, you know how grocery stores mark down the meats that’s about to go bad? I would just clean them out of all of that, and I made a big campfire, and I would just constantly be cooking meat on the campfire.
Sarah: They made the entire valley smell like barbecue, the whole time they were there.
Shelby: Maybe the craziest thing that I did is, um, I started hanging, like, bacon from the trees there because the higher up that you put food and, like, that scent, it catches the wind. And so I was like, I want to make this area as exciting for her as possible.
Sarah: One time she even hung fried chicken from the trees. And when they came back later someone had taken a single bite. Shelby thinks it must have been a bear, because what person would eat fried chicken hanging from the trees. I think it must have been a bear, because what person would only take a single bite of fried chicken.
Whatever it was, Scott and Shelby began to have concerns that it might also want to take a bite out of a person.
Scott: We had always been bear safe almost everywhere we go, even if there’s not bears, just because like a fed bear is a dead bear.
Sarah: They went around and talked to everyone else at the campground but no one seemed concerned about it. Except Shelby.
Shelby: I was also a little bit worried because like Who is liable if someone does go down there, and all of my chicken injuries have attracted a bear, and like, someone gets eaten by a bear? I was like, I’m gonna go down for murder for this. Like, and what am I gonna say? Oh well I lost a dog!
And so I made up a sign that seemed kind of semi legit saying like this trail is closed due to a lost dog and I just put it at the front of the trail and I think it did deter people.
Sarah: At any point were you like, this is over the top?
Shelby: Yeah, the whole time I knew it was over the top. When I was hanging chicken wings from the friggin fried chicken from the trees, I was like, this is, I’ve lost my mind.
Sarah: And it may have been over the top, but it did work! They got Holly eating at the same place every day for two weeks straight. She developed a regular cadence and schedule. It felt like a huge win! They were so close to having her back.
Shelby: We were like, okay, this is feeling good. Like, we’re just gonna get this dog back, you know?
But by this point it was Oct 25th. Almost 3 weeks since they had initially lost Holly. Which, you know, is a long time.
Scott: Some of my co workers, but like our family too were like, how long is too long to be out there? Or like, like, when do you think you’re going to wrap this up was like one of one of the harder questions to hear.
Sarah: I couldn’t help but ask them at every point in the story did you consider giving up then? Did you think about giving up then? I was so certain there must have been some point where they were like, “this is too much. We have to call it”.
But Shelby and Scott just weren’t looking at it that way.
Scott: To me, there wasn’t really a timeline other than, like, a family member is lost and I need to get them back.
At one point Shelby described it to me like this: if they stopped looking for Holly the story would be that they adopted a dog from an abusive household, drove her out into the woods several states away, dropped her there and basically left her for dead.
And when you put it that way, I mean, yeah. It sounds pretty bad.
Shelby: I guess shame is like not even big enough to like cover it, you know what I mean? I was just like this is Maybe the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life.
Sarah: They thought of Holly when they cooked meals. They worried about Holly when it got cold out at night. Getting their dog back consumed basically all of their thoughts. To the degree that Scott who was normally passionate and invested in his work could barely focus.
Scott: I just remember being in a meeting with one of my coworkers and he was like, you know, Do you think we should do it this way or that way?
And I didn’t say this to him at the time, but in my head, I was like, I don’t care at all about like, what, like we’ll figure some technology out that, and that crap, like, doesn’t matter.
Sarah: Meanwhile, Shelby was seriously thinking that she might lose her job.
It was like the only thing that mattered was trapping Holly. And they were ready to start.
They started with a box trap, which is like a larger version of a standard rodent trap. The dog goes in, and triggers a foot pedal and the door shuts. They were advised not to expect it to work right away. It might take Holly a little bit to get comfortable, and then curious, and then go into the trap. But they saw on the camera that Holly wasn’t interested in the box trap at all.
So, they moved to a Missy trap.
Shelby: Which is like a room like you know, those, um, like large accordion type fences that you can get for dogs that you can kind of like put in a circle. It’s basically that but taller with a net on top and then like a door that’s kind of like it has a motion sensor.
Scott: We had put bushes all over it and leaves and stuff like that to try to make it look natural. It didn’t really, but we were trying. And she like came up and put her head part way and then like, like stepped back quickly from it and like, she wasn’t even anywhere close to triggering it and I was like, Oh, geez. That’s not a good sign.
Sarah: They were right to be concerned because each type of trap that didn’t work left them with fewer and fewer options. In fact, after the Missy trap there were only about 3 options left.
But they didn’t have much time to dwell on this predicament. Because then out of nowhere Holly stopped showing up on the cameras.
We’ll be right back.
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Sarah: After weeks of Holly eating in the same place on a very consistent schedule, Scott and Shelby felt like their plan was working. But then she didn’t show up at all for several days straight. They feared the worst. Maybe she had been injured. Or her leash finally got caught on something. Or a bear or coyote got her. Or maybe they had scared her away.
Even if Holly was still out there, they were now basically back at square one. They would have to get her to start going to a new area, rehabituate her to their food, and then get her on a predictable feeding schedule so they’d know where she would be. But even before they could start all that they had to find her again, which meant they were back to trying to find a dog with trail cams in a gigantic forest. But even then their response wasn’t ‘ok, that’s it, we’re done.’ It was more like ‘ok, we’ll start over.’
Scott: I hate to say it in these terms, but we would have to like find a body to be like fully at rest with like stopping, you know what I mean? We knew that that might be a possibility at that point. And so, but like, that didn’t mean we were going to quit.
Shelby: I was really in my feels this whole time. Like it was I was very, very sad. And there were a couple of songs. Definitely a breakup song about pining after a lost lover, but I felt like I related to them so much. I would listen to them like Intentionally and think about Holly and how much I miss her and I wanted her to come home. And there’s that one, like, Maggie Rogers song, like, if you leave the light on, I’ll leave the light on, and I’m just like, this is me and Holly, and I’m leaving the light on for her.
Sarah: So they started the whole process again, but now they were on the clock. The campground was closing for the season, and nights were starting to drop below freezing. Soon there would be winter snow storms. And surely Holly couldn’t survive that.
They spread the trail cams around the forest. And waited. They did see Holly a few days later, but it looked like she was headed towards private property. Which could have been very bad if they couldn’t get access.
But as it turns out it was a huge stroke of luck. The property was owned by a couple named Chris and Christine. And they went out of their way to help with the search. They offered to let Shelby and Scott camp on their property and use the house and the showers as much as they wanted.
Shelby: And so we took all of our food, all of our bait, everything out of the forest. We moved it all to Chris and Christine’s house because they had this huge field.
Sarah: Chris and Christine also had a construction business.
Shelby: They had employees build us a huge missy trap on their property like bigger than we had had way nicer than we had had before.
Sarah: They felt like there was a chance that this one might work. It was massive.
Shelby: Truly, there are dorm rooms that are smaller than this missy trap.
Sarah: They set it up. Tried to make it look inviting. And then put fresh bait in every day for a few weeks.
Shelby: she would come right up to it, smell it, check it out, and then just walk away. Like, no big deal not doing that. So, like, it really was kind of demoralizing at a point, but like, we really tried to, like, stick it out, but by the end of the December, we were just like, there’s, she’s not doing this.
Sarah: At this point they were two and a half months into trying to get Holly back. And they decided it was time to move on to the drop net trap. This was like the boss level trap.
Bob: The drop net was almost the last resort.
Sarah: That’s Bob the dog tracker again. Bob was the only person in the area who had a drop net trap. And even though Bob had helped return thousands of pets to their owners, he had only ever used the drop net 3 times.
The drop net trap is a net held up by a series of poles in the ground. But the trick is that you build the trap very slowly. Just one pole every couple days. And then you add the net very high up. And then each day you lower the net just a little bit. So that the animal acclimates to the slow changes in their surroundings. Then on the final day, a sensor triggers the net to drop.
Scott: It’skind of this like road runner comedy. Like cartoonish, like you drop the net and then you gotta get there very quickly.
Bob: So they drove two or two or three hours down to come and, and get the equipment.
Shelby: So we were setting up these poles one by one. Like a new tree had grown, right? Just keep this calm trick her into thinking like this is totally normal. This is just what happens in fields.
Sarah: Holly would come eat under it every day. They slowly lowered the net inch by inch. It was the longest and most consistently they had ever her eating in the same spot. Shelby kept track of every day and every time she showed up.
Shelby: It was basically, like, 7am, 2pm, 5pm. She’s coming at these times every single day for her meals. And we had the net all the way lowered, too, at that point. So we were like, this is really, really good. Like, this is the closest to inside of a trap that we’ve ever gotten her.
Sarah: And finally, when the net was low enough. They powered it up.
And she didn’t come for 2 days
Scott: You know, we turned it on and she doesn’t come and we turned it back off and she comes and so like, it’s not like her routine changed. It’s like, she can tell. That something is here and we were like, can she sense electricity.
Sarah: Scott seriously started considering wrapping aluminum foil around the electronics to try to help with shielding.
Scott: I thankfully didn’t have to go that far with it because she, she came under one day when it was electrified.
Sarah: Once she was used to the electricity, They were ready for the big day.
Shelby: This was not something either that, like, we were meant to operate on our own. This was something that, like, the team comes.
Sarah: The capture usually takes 4 or 5 people. And definitely a couple people with training. And it requires complete attention because the dog will try to run and chew their way out of the net. Once you dropped the net you had to get to the dog and cover it with a blanket in 30 seconds or a minute.
So with the end hopefully in sight, Shelby and Scott rallied the Holly-catching SWAT team to assist.
Shelby: I was like, all right, we got this. Like, it’s gonna be so good. This is our day.
Sarah: Since the trap was set in an open field, the team had to hide in the van at the top of a hill. Maybe a half a mile away on a really rough unpaved road. They couldn’t see the trap.
So their plan was that they would put Bob on the ground near the trap in a camouflaged ghillie suit—like snipers wear. It was scented so Holly wouldn’t know he was there. Then when she was in the trap Bob would radio to the van at the top of the hill where an ex special forces off road driver who was a friend of Bob’s would bring them down the hill with a blanket to capture Holly.
It’s like if Wiley Coyote called for backup. This is the team he would call.
On January 17th, 2021, 93 days after Holly had run away, it was show time. Shelby made the whole team coffee and there was a buzz of excitement in the group.
Shelby: That day when everybody came out, I was like, this is good. Like, we have the whole team here. Like, this is fantastic. We’re getting our, today’s the day, we’re bringing her home.
Sarah: She had been keeping a really regular schedule so they knew when to expect her.
Bob: They went down and they armed it. And I put on my ghillie suit.
Sarah: They waited. And they waited. And 7 am passed.
Shelby: Each like step of the way that we like missed an interval that we were expecting her. It the, you could feel the excitement like waning
Bob: You’re sitting there hoping and praying that the dog’s going to come, that it’s going to be successful, and you kind of, um, you visualize that it’s all going to work out, you’re going to get the dog, and then you wait and wait and wait.
Sarah: And then 2 pm passed.
Shelby: I was like, this is a nightmare, like, like, you could definitely feel the morale slipping away minute by minute at that point, and then it started to like kinda get dark, and we were like, we gotta call this, like, we just gotta call it, she’s not coming today.
Bob: She did not show up.
Shelby: I like it felt so bad. Like I it was so like. Just so much more guilt that everybody had like given up all this time and money and energy and expertise to come out with us. Like Bob must be uncomfortable he’s literally been laying on his stomach on a freaking in a ghillie suit in the weeds and the Leaves for like eight hours at that point. I was like, this is ridiculous…
Sarah: In the morning they had been so confident. Now it was past 5 pm and they weren’t sure that they would ever bring Holly home.
They would try again, but they would need a few days to reset and get Holly on a regular schedule. But it was forecast to snow. The situation seemed dismal.
On their second attempt they all waited at the top of the hill. But Holly no-showed again. And when they went down to look at the area around the trap
Bob: We, we saw a paw prints that came up and then left. So she, she was a very, very smart dog
Sarah: The only thing they could think might be happening was that she was spooked by the smells of other people.
Scott: And so I kind of asked them, like, is it physically possible for me to do this? Like, I know that I’m not trained in the way that you guys are but I’m willing to do literally anything. Is it possible? And they were like, when that net drops, she’s going to be like fighting for her life. And so you need to be within range to do something like very quickly, or she could hurt herself.
For those doing the math here, we were in a camper van and there was, uh, a like trained, like tactical driver with a truck that was still afraid that wasn’t going to get down that hill fast enough.
So like part of me was afraid, like I would crash the van down the hill, or if I was too slow, then I would not get there in time and she might like choke herself or like run away or something like that.
Sarah: To add to the pressure, this was a one shot situation. If anything went wrong Holly was likely going to be so spooked that she’d never go near another trap they made ever again.
For days they talked about it and weighed the pros and cons. They considered every alternative you can imagine. Including a future where they just long distance owned a semi-feral dog in West Virginia and paid someone to go and put food out for her for the rest of her life.
Their friends and family were still making comments about at what point enough might be enough, and they were under a lot of pressure to come back to work in person.
To make matters worse, a big storm was rolling in in a few days and they didn’t have the supplies they’d need if they got stuck on Chris and Christine’s property. Basically, it was now or never.
Scott: And Shelby and I were like, if it is physically possible, we have to give it a shot.
Sarah: So on Jan 30th, they armed the trap again. It was 8 am. And for the rest of the day they took turns sitting in the driver’s seat waiting for a notification on their phone that Holly had triggered the trail cams near the trap.
Just after 12:30 their phones pinged.
Scott: That sequence of events I think only probably took about like a minute or two minutes. But, uh, like when I review it in my mind it feels like a lifetime.
As soon as like I saw that it was her, then it was clear the net had already dropped. And we were like, Oh crap. And like jump into the driver’s seat. Both my wife and I have done quite a bit of, uh, driving off road before, but like, this is with like a house more or less. There are cabinets that started flying open cause I was going down the hill so quickly and Shelby was holding our dog Sully in her lap and I was on the edge of safety unlike I’ve ever been before and like, I just remember losing traction once or twice, and then there was a time where the back of the van, kind of like what felt like completely lifted off the ground. Cause I went off of, over a bump. And like, that’s the type of time where like, normally I would check in with myself and say like, Hey, you’re going too hard. Like, calm down. There’s nothing that you need to do this for. But like in that moment, I was like, this is.This is the only opportunity, like it’s on right now. And so I remember like the wheels touching the ground again. I stomped back on the gas pedal and like the wheels were spinning as they landed.
Sarah: If you watch the trail cam video you can see Holly thrashing and fighting for her life trying to get out of the net. After a few seconds of panicked struggling she starts chewing and frantically shreds the net. Then she reverts, trying to yank herself out. And it works.
The net isn’t really trapping her so much as slowing her down, Then she disappears out of frame.
This is just when the sprinter van screams to a stop and Scott jumps out.
Scott: I had the blanket in my lap already. And I was skidding to a stop and then jumped out and I don’t think I’ve ever ran faster in my life.
I remember deciding to jump when I was like, probably about like six feet away from her. I remember like hoping like my body could just do more than it’s ever done before. And like, I was just so hopped up on adrenaline at that point that it did, but like, I, when I first leapt off the ground, she was still moving. And I just like barely kind of got the blanket over her as I was still like flying forward. And then like, we both together kind of like tumbled over this like hillside.
Sarah: Scott had been told to expect the worst when he caught Holly. That she would be fighting for her life. That she might bite or scratch. But that isn’t what happened at all.
Scott: At first she was surprised that I was there, but then there was this like, moment of like, calm that happened, where she just kind of like, stopped, both her and I were just breathing so hard together, but it was like, together.
Shelby: Surreal. Truly, it was surreal to have this happen. The entire time I was really trying to be like, Okay, we can do this, but also, like, we’re probably not gonna get her, and I need to be prepared for, like, what that feels like. And so when we actually, like, succeeded, and we got her, and we had her in our hands, it just truly felt like a dream.
Sarah: Still holding Holly in the blanket, Scott had a wave of emotions unlike any he had ever felt. Because for the first time in months he considered the possibility that maybe Holly wouldn’t actually hate them. Maybe she could still be their dog.
For 106 days, across three seasons, Scott and Shelby had agonized over every moment, consumed by every detail for how they might get Holly back. But it only now occurred to them that they didn’t have a plan for what would happen next.
They decided to take her into a nearby shed.
Scott: Then when we got in to that shed was like the first sense of like full, Like, wow, we actually do have her and it wasn’t like what do we do now it was like, okay so now begins the rebuilding of this relationship.
Sarah: In the shed they got what felt like 5 leashes on her and then took her up to the house for a bath.
After she was safely behind several layers of walls and cleaned up and comfy Scott went out to take down the trap.
And even this was surprisingly emotional. It felt like even though the trap was just a collection of inanimate objects, it was also something more than that. It was a teammate. And they had just won something.
Scott: I just felt like each pole that I pulled out of the ground with like I should be thankful for the fact that I’m getting to take it down because it worked. It was the first time I took some time to actually think about like that. we just threaded a needle right there. Like, I can’t believe all that just happened.
Sarah: Now, more than three years later, Holly is a totally integrated member of the family. She sleeps on the bed, plays in the yard, and gets walked with only one leash.
Shelby: Oh were you barking for me? Okay come on in. Hi pretty. I didn’t know you were outside the door barking.
Sarah: But for the longest time, it didn’t seem like any of that would ever happen. It didn’t seem like they’d find Holly. Or that they could coax her to eat in the same place. Or that they could successfully trap her and bring her out of the cold. A lot of people doubted them. But they never doubted themselves. Not once. Their commitment was immediate and unwavering. They were going to get Holly back, no matter what.
Does that kind of remind you of someone? To me, it feels like Scott and Shelby dedicated themselves to Holly in the way that most dogs are dedicated to their humans. They were loyal, and motivated, and gave her absolutely everything they had.
They simply decided she was family. And that was it. You fight for your family. You hang fried chicken from trees. You devote yourself, without asking for anything in return. And the thing about dogs is, you never have to wonder if they’d do the same.
Peter Frick-Wright: Sarah Vitak is an audio producer in Colorado. She’s not so much into mushing these days. Instead, it’s AKC Agility competitions.
This story was written and produced by Sarah and edited by me, Peter Frick-Wright, and Robbie Carver, with music and sound design by Robbie as well.
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