THAT’S DOGGED!
After 15-week search, rescuers lure runaway Zena with posh sausage
IT sounds like a shaggy-dog story – the tale of a missing mutt and the tenacious team who never gave up in their £1,500 mission to bring her home.
When terrier cross Zena bolted through an open door, her foster family feared she’d never be seen again.
She had already been mistreated in her home country of Bosnia but was rescued and brought to the Claws and Paws Rescue Centre in Pill, Somerset.
After three weeks there, she was found a temporary home with the foster family in nearby Shirehampton, where she escaped just a fortnight later in April.
But a Facebook group dedicated to finding missing pets embarked on a painstaking 15-week mission to find, then capture the nervous dog – a tortuous, expensive process which even involved technology such as pairs of night-vision goggles costing a total of £300 and a £179 camera. The intrepid animal was even seen swimming across the River Avon several times.
Even after locating nervous Zena at Blaise Castle park in June, they had to lure her further and further towards and into a cage, night after night, using treats including delicatessen sausage and meatballs costing £346 alone. Shelly Spiller, 32, Amanda James, 42, and Hazel Richards, 52 – who run Bristol and Somerset Missing Dogs – would camp out in the early hours.
They had to fend off teenagers, drunks and foxes during their night patrols, which sometimes lasted until 3am. When a month passed without success, they launched a GoFundMe page to raise money for some of the technology – and had to fork out some of their own cash. Then on Monday, stopped until we did. When we first they made a longer one. Miss after nearly six months on the started looking, it was during the Spiller added: ‘We must have spent run, Zena was finally captured in summer so there would be people about £500 which came out of our the cage by the tempting feast. hanging around the park being own pocket. We would move the The hapless pet is now living at an loud, which spooked her. bowl an inch or two back every day animal rescue centre, where she ‘At the beginning we were out so she would go further back into will rebuild her confidence until there until 2.30 to 3am in the morning. the cage and eventually hit the she is ready to be fostered again. But once we got the camera footplate [which closes the trap].
Miss Spiller said: ‘I just can’t installed we were able to watch ‘It was all about having a lot of believe we actually managed to the trap from one of our houses.’ patience.’ Miss Spiller explained: catch her. But we wouldn’t have The first trap was too small, so ‘She’s very nervous around people so it was probably too early for her to be fostered.
‘There are going to be people who will say why did you spend months searching for her when she had only been with her foster family for two weeks – but I just think animals shouldn’t be dismissed. We treated ourselves to a well-deserved pint afterwards – but tomorrow we’ll be on to the next one.’