Homeward bound
Man’s six-week search for his dog ends happily
By all accounts, John Brennan is a dog person.
He’s owned big Alaskan Malamutes so tall they could rest their chins on the kitchen counter and a Shiloh Shepherd named Jessie who he spent three blissful years with. But none of those dogs were like Emma, his newest
Shiloh Shepherd.
Brennan and Emma — who he calls “the most intelligent and sensitive animal” he has ever known — live in Pound Ridge, N.Y., where he manages a family’s estate. There, they live a quiet life.
“Emma has lived here for five and a half years and has the run of this place,” Brennan said. “It’s about eight acres and it’s all secure and deer fenced and electric gates — all that kind of stuff. So, she has
had the run of the place and she’s used to being loose on this property.”
He and his seven-year-old dog mostly avoid other people, on account of Emma’s skittish nature. She was mistreated as a puppy, an experience that made her weary of anyone who isn’t her owner.
In late October, Brennan took Emma out of her usual terrain and left her with a dog sitter while he tended to business in Atlanta.
The phone call came not long after he left, early on October 29. Emma broke free from her sitter. And so began a six-week, desperate search.
Emma’s travels would take her all across lower Fairfield County. People spotted her in North Stamford, in Darien, in New Caanan. As Brennan and volunteers from CT Dog Gone Recovery — a group dedicated to helping folks find their lost dogs — put up signs across the region broadcasting that Emma had fled, concerned families as far away as Wilton and Bedford reported sightings.
“Because of the technology that we have now, I kept getting reports and pictures,” he said. “People have surveillance cameras, so I got videos of Emma
walking through people’s yard.”
Brennan was always hot on his pup’s trail. Still, it was no use.
“It was incredibly frustrating and we were always just a little bit behind,” Brennan said. “There were probably three or four times where, especially in North Stanford, I missed her like by 40 seconds.”
Diane Hitchings sent him a video from the Stamford-Darien border. Her house sits on the Noroton River, and she saw a shadowy looking animal lurking in her backyard one day in November.
That’s when Emma’s tale intersected with that of another canine that’s been drawing attention in the region.
“I saw actually what I thought might be the coyote on the other side of the river. Because I thought it was the coyote perhaps, I paid a lot of attention,” said Hitchings. “I wasn’t very happy at the thought of it being this far.”
She was referring to a coyote that, according to many reports, has been scaring residents in the Cove section of Stamford for weeks. The animal is unafraid of people and has gotten too close to many for comfort. Stamford Animal Control reports it has left animal carcasses in yards and killed two family pets. Some officials say the activity likely has been the result of more than one animal.
Hitchings started snapping pictures and recording videos of the figure stalking through her backyard — but as she looked closer, something caught her eye. When the animal turned towards her, Hitchings realized that a black collar hung around its neck.
This was someone’s pet. A friend encouraged Hitchings to write about the dog in her yard on Next Door, a website dedicated to local happenings. After she posted a description of the animal, comments started coming in about Emma, a dog from Pound Ridge.
Hitchings didn’t think that a lost animal from that many miles away could be near her home, but she called the number on the “Lost Dog” posters anyways. Brennan picked up immediately, and after she sent him the videos, he was certain it was Emma.
“I don’t really believe it was a coincidence,” Hitchings said. “I think it was just the powers that be aligning.”
Hitchings wasn’t the only helper Brennan encountered along the way. People everywhere were enraptured by Emma’s story. Every report of a dog who looked slightly like Emma became Emma; there were false alarms left and right, simply because people cared.
Jeff Northcutt got pulled in through Next Door too. He woke up before dawn one morning to
notifications on his iPad.
“Something activated my Ring doorbell at whatever time it was in the morning,” he said. His camera captured Emma wandering by his front door. Like Hitchings, Northcutt thought the behemoth dog was a wolf or coyote until he noticed the tags.
Northcutt found Brennan’s pleas about his missing dog on Next Door that same morning, and not long after, he started flying his drone around North Stamford to help find Emma.
“( John would) go driving around, and I’d put the drone up. I’d move around to different locations where she was reported,” said Northcutt. “You can you get a much better view from up high and overhead, especially in wooded areas.”
Those little moments of kindness kept Brennan going during the six weeks Emma was gone.
“It was looking pretty doubtful,” he said. “I thought Emma was going to be one of those ghosts dogs.”
The situation looked all but hopeless near the end. Emma had been gone for just about a month and a half, and the video from Hitchings was his last big lead.
After a day of radio silence, Stamford Police called Brennan on December 10. They had his dog down by the Cove.
Again, it came back to the Stamford coyote. Someone down by the water had mistaken Emma
— who by that point was had lost more than 30 pounds — for the feared animal.
It had been six weeks to the day.
“She looked like a skeleton with skin wrapped around it, it was horrifying,” Brennan said.
After two weeks back at home, Emma looks more normal again. The dog’s veterinarian reported on Monday that she’d gained back 16 pounds after the ordeal.
“I took her to the dog groomer yesterday and now she’s all fluffy,” her owner said. “She looks like none of this ever happened.”
And even after traversing the wilderness for weeks on end (Brennan estimates his dog traversed more than 100 miles of ground) Emma is just as happy as ever.
“After being through that kind of an ordeal and being terrified and starving to death ... she’s exactly who she was,” Brennan said. “She’s the same quirky, unusual, and wonderful dog.”
Emma’s Connecticut adventures aren’t over yet. Even though she’s returned home, the dog now has a loyal fanbase. People want to see the dog who has been through it all.
“Emma and I are gonna do a homecoming tour, because there are some people who very much want to meet her,” Brennan said. “We’re gonna go from North Stamford to New Canaan into Wilton. It’s very sweet.”