ROD REELED BACK IN
Ellie Methot, right, and her parents, Miriam and Hugh Campbell, are thankful to be reunited with Rod, a Bernese mountain dog whose disappearance united a neighbourhood until he was found Tuesday, hiding near a snow pile.
“I don't even have words,” says Ellie Methot. “It's the most beautiful thing I've ever witnessed. People are good.”
Perhaps we could all use a shaggy dog story with a happy ending right about now.
The main character of the tale is Rod, a 10-month old Bernese mountain dog, a good-looking fella with an odd but tender personality.
“He's afraid of his own shadow,” says Ellie, 29, mother of two and the wife of Marc Methot, the former Ottawa Senators defenceman.
So much so that Rod would spend hours parked by the back door — “cowering” — too timid to engage with humans.
Rod came from a breeder in the Magog area and was to be fostered with Ellie's parents, Miriam and Hugh Campbell, in their home near Walkley Road and St. Laurent Boulevard. The hope was that, over the course of several weeks, Rod would overcome his shyness and eventually return to Magog as a breeding animal.
Monday evening, at about 6 p.m., Rod somehow escaped, first down the street, then around the corner, then onto busy Walkley Road. Now frantic calls were being made to Ellie in Manotick, telling her that Rod was on a road trip, destination unknown.
A lifelong dog lover, she bolted to the scene. By then, Ottawa police Const. Stephen Kirtz was tracking Rod down Walkley, trying to keep him away from traffic in his cruiser.
He said OC Transpo drivers, civilians, even paramedics stopped their vehicles to create a blockade.
“He just kept running down the middle of the road,” said Const. Kirtz. “Probably 10 or 15 times I leaped to catch him, but I couldn't get him.”
Now word began to spread on social media. It doesn't hurt that Marc Methot has 67,000 followers on Twitter and his message at 9:34 p.m. was retweeted hundreds of times.
Pretty soon, reports Ellie, there were total strangers canvassing a radius from Hunt Club to Walkley to Hawthorne, on the lookout for roaming Roddy.
As the evening wore on, attention was focusing on an area near the Kal Tire location on Sheffield Road.
“You know when you have a feeling?” she asked.
Accompanied by friends and her two other dogs, Franky and Indy, they followed what appeared to be large dog tracks that went in one direction, then doubled back. But it was getting dark and the weather was turning. No sign of Rod.
“I got home that night and I'm devastated,” says Ellie.
Early the next morning, everybody was back on the hunt. Armed with hastily-made posters, Ellie and her friends canvassed the area by vehicle and on foot. They knocked on doors and tried to marshal support on Facebook.
Logan Blair, 27, a registered massage therapist, saw an online notice Monday evening. He has a four-year-old Bernese named Boomer.
“I just had this really odd feeling that I had to go look for him.”
His girlfriend, Cassandra Beaupre, had to stop him from heading out late Monday night.
Tuesday after work, he stopped to see Miriam and picked up some posters and the latest intel about the dog's possible whereabouts. It was now about 9 p.m.
He and Cassandra spent nearly an hour looking along Walkley near the 417 overpass. Just as they were to about to call it a night, Blair “just had this weird, gut feeling” to take a gander down the train tracks.
He said he trudged about 500 metres in knee-deep snow to a point parallel to the rear yard of a recycling plant. And then it happened.
“His eyes lit up in the distance from my head lamp.”
He clambered over and there was Rod, tucked in between a fence and what appeared to be a large pile of snow-covered debris, as though he'd reached a dead end. Not wanting to alarm the animal, he alerted Cassandra and Miriam that he had a visual on the lost dog.
While speaking quietly to the shy dog, Cassandra looped around the fence to make sure he didn't bolt. Within minutes, there was a crowd on scene — friends, cops — including the two people Rod is closest to, Miriam and Ellie.
“When he saw them, he just lost his mind,” said Blair.
Ellie, meanwhile, who hopes her family can one day permanently adopt Rod, is overwhelmed with the outpouring of support.
“The amount of love and support from absolute strangers,” she said Wednesday. “Honest to God, I can't believe we live in a city where so many people are willing to do that for someone they've never even met.”