Runaway pet was top dog in Ala. prison

An English setter named Soup was honing his quail-hunting skills when he was distracted by a scent. In the woods next to the pecan orchard where he was training, Soup smelled a deer, his owner said. The dog took off running into the trees in Montgomery, Alabama, leaving his owner behind.

Soup’s owners, Michael Parker and Leigh Goyer Parker, searched for him for days. They were despondent, Leigh said, and thought their 3-year-old pup was gone forever.

Then the Parkers got a call from a guard at the prison a mile away. He heard that the couple was looking for the dog, and he wanted to tell them that he knew where Soup was. The dog’s tag fell off, and employees at the prison didn’t know Soup had a microchip.

Michael discovered Soup was living large at Kilby Correctional Facility, which receives most of the state’s inmates for evaluation. The inmates were giving up their dinners to feed Soup, who feasted on roast beef, chicken tenders, steak and peach cobbler, as first reported by the Montgomery Advertiser.

Soup, whose name was the nickname of Leigh’s father, got to run around a big field outside, play basketball with the inmates and tussle with the K-9s who work at the facility.

“He was living high on the hog,” Leigh said.

Charles Brooks, a plant maintenance supervisor, said he found Soup at 6 a.m. last week lying by a state vehicle and looking scared. After Brooks fed him a biscuit, the dog followed the maintenance staff everywhere. At night, Soup slept under a shed outside, and he rested on top of a makeshift bed of old towels during the day.

Brooks met Michael outside the maintenance shop when he pulled up to the prison in his truck.

“Do you have good news for me?” Michael asked, according to Brooks.

“You absolutely knew that it was his dog,” Brooks said. “Me and the dog were inseparable for three days, and he wouldn’t even come to me when that man pulled up.”