"Maya", Chihuahua/Terrier/Dachshund mix, Dublin - Found!

Weather was rain and cold all day, and was the same for several days prior to the search. 

Maya is an approximately two year old spayed, Chihuahua/Doxie/Terrier mix. Her family had recently adopted her from a local shelter, after Maya spent four months at the shelter following her rescue from a large hoarding case. Her person is a volunteer at the shelter and was able to get to know Maya prior to her official adoption.

A month after her adoption one of her new family members decided to take Maya out for walk. She was wearing her collar with full ID tags, and she is microchipped. Unfortunately, the leash was not completely fastened to the collar and Maya broke away and took off. 

She was not seen for over two days when she reappeared back at the shelter where she was adopted from. However, she would not approach anybody, and ran away when a volunteer recognized her and tried to catch her. 

We met the next day at the shelter, and when I arrived I was told that Maya had been spotted just the prior evening at a fire station a block away. The fire fighters had known about her missing and put out a bowl of food. She arrived there later that evening. They called Maya's people at home, and left a message. Unfortunately, nobody was home and the home phone did not forward to the cell phone, which had an out of the area area code.

I suggested we go to the fire station and ask if they would be willing to have a trap set on their property, and they agreed. Plus, Maya's people lived very close by, and they would be able to come by to maintain it and observe it. 

We started the search behind the fire station, and found the track leading away from the station and up into the fenced facility of Santa Rita Jail. The whole area of the shelter and fire station is all property of Alameda County, and includes the county jail, Santa Rita, and a Federal Prison, which even Maya's person did not know existed, and she lives within two miles of the area.

We were allowed permission into Santa Rita jail, and the track led onto the shooting range. We did get permission to enter that facility, even though there was practice occurring. At one point, we did get behind the shooting, but we decided to sit back and wait, as per instructed by the Range Master. 

The track came back out of the shooting range and came out of the jail and then made a right down the main road. This led us directly onto the property of a federal prison. We were not allowed to follow the track throughout the prison, but, strangely we were allowed to follow the road through the prison all the way to the back where there was staff housing. We passed out flyers there, but nobody was out since it was pouring rain.

We walked back to the cars, and by this time Maya's person  had arranged to have her husband pick up a large trap and bring it to the fire station, along with same cans of food. We found a nice secluded place to put the trap in the yard of the station back near the dumpster. 

I received a call the next day in the afternoon that Maya had been caught in the trap! Maya had been spotted for the past 24 hours in a couple of spots close by near the jail and the shelter and the fire station. They moved the trap to one of those locations, and got a couple of more traps and was in the process of setting them, when they checked the first one and found Maya inside. 

I was told she was very hunger and appeared disoriented. They brought the trap into the shelter and released her from inside one of the rooms. 

Total Distance: 16.13 km (10.0 mi)
Total Time: 3:13:53
Moving Time: 2:05:28
Average Pace: 12.02 min/km (19.3 min/mi)
Average Moving Pace: 7.78 min/km (12.5 min/mi)
Min Pace: 4.17 min/km (6.7 min/mi)
Min Elevation: 25 m (82 ft)
Max Elevation: 117 m (384 ft)
Elevation Gain: 708 m (2324 ft)
Max Grade: 4 %
Min Grade: -17 %
Recorded: Sat Mar 19 09:33:12 PDT 2011

View Maya in a larger map