Pet Detective Case Blog: "Valentine", Beagle, Tri-color, Duncans Mills

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Sonoma West Times: Rescued Beagle Survives Epic Adventure in Northwest Sonoma County Woods for 28 Days!

I received the following thank-you note from Valentine's family:

"July 25, 2012

Dear Jackie,

Thanks so much for all your help those five days we spent on our searches.

Valentine is safe at home and doing great, like she never missed a beat!

Thanks also to Dino and his hard work!

Best Wishes,

Karin and Shawn O’Connell"

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Found! June 22, 2012!

I received a text that Valentine had been found today! She was found back in Duncan's Mills, back at the house she went missing from. She was still wearing her collar with tags and she was dragging about two feet of her Flexi leash cord. She had lost about half her weight, but was otherwise in good shape.

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Valentine is a two year old tri-colored spayed Beagle. When she went missing she was wearing a collar with ID tags and she is microchipped.

She had only been in her current home for a few months after being adopted through Beagle Rescue, and the rescue group got her from a laboratory that was releasing a few of their dogs used in experiments.

This was her first trip to Duncans Mills. She was tied up with a leash when she got scared by a loud noise and took off, dragging her leash behind her. The family members saw her run off and attempted to find her, but could not.

We were brought up the next day and found the track leading away from the house to the right, facing the house. It went around and around one specific house and also appeared to go behind the house. Then the track led back past the house where she was tied up and straight down Freezeout Road, across River Road and into a large cattle ranch in Duncans Mills.

Below are the GPS maps of all five days when we tracked her throughout Duncans Mills, toward Jenner, out to Goat Rock Beach, up Willow Creek Road, all the way to Occidental, a trip of many, many, many miles. From there she went through Occidental, all the way to Freestone, out to Bodega, in and around Bodega and back through the town, heading out toward Valley Ford. From here we tracked her onto several large ranches all around the area.

The last track led onto a private ranch and into a pasture with cows and babies. We made contact with the ranch owner, who was super, super friendly even though we were contacting her on early Sunday morning, but she said we were not allowed into the pasture since the cows were aggressive toward humans and animals with their babies. We did check a couple of gates from that pasture to see if a track led out, but Dino said "No" to each gate. This meant that she existed from another part of the pasture, which we were not able to follow up on since we did not have access to the original pasture.

At this point, after five days of searching and over three weeks time, we stopped the search. Valentine's person said she would call me if another sighting was told to her. All this time, we were following the track continuously from day to day without a single interruption in the track.

It was unclear where she lost her leash since it was never found. However, when she was found, she was dragging about two feet of her former leash behind her, so that tells me that somewhere along the way, she chewed off her leash after being stuck. My best guess is that it was chewed off behind the house, down the road when she was initially lost. It was a thickly wooded area, and it appeared she went back pretty far into the woods.