Lookout Valley community cares for lost dog for 14 months
Beasley the dog has become something of a celebrity after surviving for 14 months, including most of two winters, on the streets, separated from her owner, Melanee Lundquist who lives in Arkansas.
Beasley, named after a doll on the 1960s sitcom “Family Affair,” was staying temporarily with Lundquist’s cousin, Rachel Noble, in Chickamauga. The dog jumped a fence and disappeared on just her second day with Noble.
“Beasley sometimes jumped the fence at home in Arkansas,” says Noble, “but she would always come right back. But here, she was out of her element. Nothing looked familiar to her and I think it confused her.”
People began to hunt for the large black Goldendoodle. There were sightings, but no one was able to catch the dog. Noble says Beasley was shy and skittish around strangers.
Beasley ended up just over the Tennessee line, around Brown’s Ferry Road and Cummings Highway, in the Lookout Valley area. She developed a loop of about two miles she would travel looking for food, often late at night and in the wee hours of the morning.
As Lundquist and Noble were thinking Beasley was gone forever and hoping she had been taken in by someone who hadn’t had her scanned for the microchip she had, a community of people who didn’t know where the dog came from was helping it.
“So many people were feeding Beasley,” says Lunquist. “Restaurants, stores, residents and other people were helping Beasley survive, but we didn’t know that.”
Others were still keeping an eye out for the dog, too. Someone spotted her toward the end of February and took some pictures that reached Noble through Facebook. Noble’s son sent the pictures to Lundquist, suggesting she not get up her hopes.
“I stared at the pictures all night,” says Lundquist. “It had been so long since we’d heard anything, but I was 99% sure it was Beasley.”
Lundquist and her boyfriend made arrangements to take off work and come back in hopes of experiencing a miracle.
“When we got to town,” says Lundquist, “we spent five days driving all over and walking the streets, talking to people who had been helping Beasley. We sighted Beasley a number of times, but she was afraid and didn’t seem to know us. On Feb. 24, we went back to our hotel after midnight. We hadn’t seen Beasley all day on Sunday, and we were thinking we might have to give up.”
Lundquist said that shortly after going to bed, she was awakened by a call. It was a cashier who said Beasley was in the parking lot at her store.
Lundquist and her boyfriend left immediately. They found Beasley wandering around looking for food. Lundquist was trying to keep her distance and not frighten the dog. She saw some people stop in a car and throw bread out the window for Beasley, who was eating it up. “I got close enough to call out to the people and tell them Beasley was my dog,” says Lundquist, who was holding a piece of beef jerky behind her back.
The people drove away and Beasley got a whiff of the jerky and trotted up behind Lundquist and took it from her hand.
Lundquist turned to sit on the ground, and recognition suddenly kicked in for Beasley. There followed a reunion of hugging, licking, joy and tears suited to the happy occasion.
“I held onto her collar with a death grip,” says Lundquist,
BEASLEY,