The Day We Lost Koko

By Val Lodholm and Dr. Sandra Coon

Some of our long time clients will remember "Koko" our Standard Poodle.  Well in 1997 she got lost and our lives were put on hold for four days while we hunted.  While she had a microchip we felt that we needed to do everything we could to find her soon!  If the HomeAgain system had been in place I am sure that we would have found her sooner.

We decided that Koko was not getting enough exercise so we hired a dog walker.  This is a person who will take your dog along with other people's dogs to the park to run around.  I forgot to tell her that Koko is prone to running away either when scared or chasing after a small animal.  One time when we were walking on the beach in Long Beach she chased after a flock of birds.  The birds ware flying into the wind therefore Koko could not hear us calling her.  She got a long way down the beach before I was able to catch up to her ONLY because the birds had stopped. 

July 1, 2:00 PM

Koko was out with her walker when she was scared away by some bigger dogs.  She ran off and our walker couldn't catch up to her.  Another lady saw this go on and got into her car and chased after her.  Koko went out of the park and started to go up the off ramp onto the freeway (the same route in that she took to get there).  She made her way up the freeway (against on coming traffic) for a mile or so.  People were stopping and trying to get her to come to them and get in the car.  She wouldn't come to anyone and eventually ran off the freeway.

July 2

Sandy and I spent the next morning making and putting up signs in the area trying to get people to call us with information.  We asked everyone in the dog area where she was last seen and no one had seen her.  At this point we didn't know she had made her way up onto the freeway until someone told me his wife had seen the whole thing.  Sandy and I feared the worst and went up onto the on ramp expecting to see a dead Koko in the ditch.  We did not, much to our relief.  We kept putting up signs until about 7:00 PM and went home to sleep

July 3rd

  36 hours after she had left I got a call on my voice mail from a lady who saw Koko in Bellevue trying to get across the road and then tried to coax her to get into the car.  When the lady failed to get her she went on her way to Redmond where she saw our sign (about 5 miles away!).  The next day we went out to the area and started to post signs.  We got lots of calls during the day with sightings but none were recent enough for us to get close to her.

Sandy stayed up all night that night putting up signs trying to stay ahead of her.  She was headed in a westerly direction - toward home.  Her problem was that she would have to cross over the 520 bridge to get across the water.  So Sandy spent the night putting up signs around the freeway in hopes that someone would call us with a fresh sighting. 

July 4th

Sandy and I went out with Sandy's folks, a pager and two cell phones.  We put all the phone numbers on the signs so that we could get the calls should someone see her. 

As we traveled the area where the last sighting had been made we asked people if they had seen her, one or two people had but none within the last 12 hours.  It did appear that she was had stayed in the same neighborhood for the past 24 hours so we concentrated on putting up signs and looking for her there.   The day was hot and dry, a beautiful day for a holiday but not for trying to find a dog and it couldn't have been nice for Koko who had to walk on the hot pavement looking for water.

6:00 PM July 4th

We were very hot, tired and discouraged because no one had seen her.  Either she was dead or injured and not moving where people could see her (likely), she had moved into an area where there were no signs (also likely) or someone had her and she was safe (not likely).  Looking for this dog was worse than trying to find a needle in a haystack because the needle was moving!!  Our friend Daryl Vange called it a broken clock theory:  a clock that is broken shows the correct time twice a day but a clock that is 5 seconds slow is never on time.  If she would only stay in one place for a while we would probably run into her.  She would never think of that so we decided that it was time for us to stay in one place for a while and see if she could find us.  We figured that the reason she was staying in the same area was because she could smell us.  We were making plans to camp out in the area hoping that Koko would wander into our camp.  Just then we got a call from a lady named Lisa who said that she had seen Koko running on NE 8th, (west bound) toward Bellevue (less than a mile from where we were sitting when the call came in) I asked her if she was following her now and she said that she wasn't because she had to go back to the store where she had seen the sign to get our phone number.

We headed out to the area where she had been seen but could not see her.  We asked people and wandered around.  Sandy got out of the car and I got on the freeway, just in case she tried to get home that way.  Nothing!

6:30 PM

Sandy's folks were getting too tired and had to go home.  So Sandy and I decided to comb the area; we figured she couldn't have gone far.  We saw a guy walking his dog and asked him if he had seen a brown poodle running around here.  He said that some people were chasing her on the next street over. We turned the corner and there she was, 3 blocks ahead and with about 3 others chasing her.  We called her but she didn't recognize us.  We cornered her and she still didn't recognize us.  We almost lost her again as she tried to run away from us but the next time she was cornered I got out of the car, (Sandy was on foot behind me) and called her.  When I called her she hesitated but clearly not sure it was me.  She barked at me once then started to run off again.  I opened the back of our station wagon, clapped my hands a couple of times and called her and told her to get in the car.  This she recognized and jumped into the car panting up a storm.  She appeared to be very happy to be home.

7:30 PM

We got her to the hospital where Sandy gave her a physical exam, fluids and bandaged her paws (they were worn raw from the pavement).  She was in very good shape except for losing 10% of her body weight

I still can't believe that we found her, I believe that had it not been for pagers and cell phones we would not have found Koko alive and well.  Thinking back on the way she was acting she would have to be hit by a car or injured in some way in order for someone to help her.  Needless to say we are very happy to have our dog back!