Dog blanks owner in emotional video
In the first week of 2024, Ta’e the mastiff cross went missing for five days. Finally found with the help of Nelson dog tracker Don Schwass, her owners waited anxiously to be reunited with their beloved pooch.
“We’re trying not to scare her off,” Ta’e’s mother says, in video capturing the moment.
“Here she is, come on girl, come on baby, here she comes. Oh my god, I can’t believe it. Here she is, our baby. Oh my god, she’s home.”
The Whangārei woman is overcome with emotion.
“Oh far out. Sorry everyone for the tears, but f... me, it’s been hell.”
Inexplicably, the dog, who had been steadily approaching the car and her ‘dad’, abruptly turns around and heads off.
Her owner, distraught, attempts to call her back, but Ta’e has already disappeared in the opposite direction.
The video capturing this heartbreaking moment was shared online by Schwass as an illustration of what happened when a dog “zombies” its owner.
It had more than 29,000 views, moving many of those watching to tears, and prompting others who have had similar experiences to share them – such as the owner of a german shepherd who found her dog walking down the road in a “trance”.
“She looked at me like she had never seen me before,” the woman said.
“And this was a dog that had never left my side more than 10 feet! Ever!”
Schwass said Ta’e was successfully reunited with her owners in the end, but the dog had gone into what he dubbed “zombie mode”, when a lost dog blanked their owner, even if they had had the dog for many years and given it nothing but unconditional love.
“This mode is selected by the dog for the reason of survival, and it will avoid contact with anyone,” he explained.
“The way I explain to make people understand is, if the world was possessed by zombies, you would run too. Not all dogs zombie people, but a good 70% do.”
Animal behaviourist Mark Vette said lost dogs would be frightened, and would have had more frights while they had been away from their owners, putting the dog into a state of sympathethic arousal.
Vette said he had been in the situation a “good number of times” where owners had been trying to capture an animal that had been away for more than a week.
“They go more and more feral, effectively, and more fearful and more anxious about people.”
Schwass said while every case was different, dogs needed to smell their owners before they saw or heard them.
For decades, he had travelled the country helping to find lost dogs, and said every breed is different in their disappearing habits: just before Christmas, fox terriers chased spring time rabbits, and sadly about half of them slipped themselves into holes, got stuck, and perished.
Even labradors would go off on a bit of a “bender”.
“Most dogs are repeat offenders. They’ll start off getting out the gate for half an hour, will come back, stretch it out for two hours, and then it's gone overnight.
“Then it does what I call a bender, and it’s gone for like five days.”
There were common mistakes, he said, when it came to looking for them.
The first would be to round up a “posse” to chase the dog – which was the worst possible thing you could do, because you would be basically chasing it, he said.
Instead, owners should harness the power of social media, asking for anyone who spots the missing canine to take a photo, noting the location and the time, and to contact the owner.
Failing that, there was the option of calling in the experts such as Schwass, who had reunited hundreds of dogs with their owners over the years.
Schwass provides his services free of charge, giving up his time and money to track the missing animals. He has a Givealittle page for anyone who wants to help his work.
“She looked at me like she had never seen me before.” Dog owner