The fate of Fisher’s dog
When police found Robert Fisher’s Toyota 4Runner in the Tonto National Forest, the family dog, Blue, was cowering underneath. There was no sign of Fisher, suspected of murdering his wife and kids. It took a veterinarian’s help to coax the dog out.
If Robert Fisher’s 2-year-old Queensland Heeler could talk, he could probably solve the mystery of what happened to the fugitive.
Anyone familiar with the Robert Fisher murder case remembers how he spared Blue, the family dog, after the crime he was accused of: murdering his wife and two children and blowing up their Scottsdale home on April 10, 2001.
Authorities found Fisher’s Toyota 4Runner east of Payson in the Tonto National Forest 10 days later. Blue was hiding under the truck, using the vehicle for shelter. There was no sign of Fisher.
Scottsdale Sgt. Don Bellendier was one of four law-enforcement officers who tried to catch the dog in the remote forest.
The dog would walk toward them, as if feeling them out, and then retreat with distrust. His nose was full of porcupine quills. He seemed frightened and in pain.
They were making no headway. Enter Payson veterinarian Patti Blackmore.
She got a call about picking up a loose dog in the national forest. She was in surgery with another dog on that Saturday morning. But as soon as she finished, she and a friend drove to where law enforcement had set up a perimeter north of the small town of
Young, Arizona.
“Police actually asked if I had brought my stun gun,” she said in a recent interview with The Arizona Republic. “They watch too much TV. I said, ‘No. I’m a veterinarian.’ ”
Blackmore and her friend piled into a sport utility vehicle with a half-dozen law enforcement officers, who were wearing bullet-proof vests. They headed out over a bumpy road to where the Toyota 4Runner sat amid the Ponderosas. She noticed someone preparing to load the vehicle onto a trailer.
“I told them, ‘Don’t load the vehicle on the flatbed until I catch the dog because that’s the whole reason the dog is sticking around.’ ”
She had the officers wait inside the car.
She noted the dog was a Queensland Heeler, likely a mix because he was lanky with a longer nose. She approached with caution. She knew heelers are not always friendly. They are herding dogs, more fearful than aggressive.
She threw the dog a piece of doughnut, which he gobbled down. She fed him bits of doughnut until he was eating out of her hand, then slipped a leash over his head.
Her friend later told her that the law enforcement officers marveled at Blackmore’s ability to capture the dog.
“She’s brave,” one of them said. “She’s really good at what she does,” her friend said.
Blackmore gave him an injection to tranquilize him so she could transport him and remove the quills. She pulled 75 to 100 quills from his nose.
Why would Fisher leave dog alone?
Fisher, a 40-year-old avid hunter and fisher, was known for having a dog by his side.
Before Blue, he had a black Labrador Retriever named Ruger that he would take hunting and camping.
Ruger was gone by the time Fisher was accused of killing his wife, Mary, and two children, Brittney and Bobby. Blue was younger. He was more of a family pet. He slept in Bobby’s bed. Mary took him for walks. Scottsdale police note in one of their reports that Blue was “very trained” but don’t indicate what sort of training he had.
John Heinzelman, the Scottsdale detective currently assigned to the Fisher case, said the dog presented a unique set of questions for investigators.
“Some people became dog experts. What would the dog do?” he said. “The
harsh reality is I don’t know. I don’t know what Blue would be thinking.”
One popular theory: The loyal dog would have never left Fisher’s side. If Fisher hiked into the woods or went inside a cave to kill himself, the dog would have tagged along.
Bellendier, the Scottsdale sergeant who is now retired from the department, believes Fisher left his dog in the vehicle with the windows down for air. Eventually, the dog got out to look for food and sniffed a porcupine. He didn’t jump back inside because the windows were too high.
He believes someone picked up Fisher in another vehicle because Blue would have followed him. If Fisher tried to hike out on his own, the dog also would have followed, he said.
“I had an Australian cattle dog at the time, and they are one of the most loyal dogs on the planet,” Bellendier said. “There’s no way that dog would stay behind.”
So why did Fisher spare Blue’s only to leave his dog in the forest?
Bellendier believes Fisher knew having a dog would get him spotted and reported to police.
Traveling with a dog requires a person to be more out in the open, even if it’s just to let the dog out to go to the bathroom. A blue cattle dog is also rarer than a more popular breed, like a Golden Retriever, which would make Fisher stand out.
Instead, Fisher remained elusive, the subject of a manhunt that would land him on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list and make the crime one of Arizona’s most memorable, even 20 years later.
FBI
Special
Agent
Taylor
life
Hannah,
who is currently assigned to the case, said the dog has become part of the mythology surrounding the Fisher murder case. She said Fisher’s family and friends believe he took the dog because he wanted to give the family pet a chance to live.
On the other hand, someone who has just killed his wife and children is probably not thinking as logically as most people, she said.
“Maybe he didn’t give any thought to why he brought the dog,” she said.
A professor who studies dog behavior, but was not involved in the Fisher case, told The Arizona Republic that Fisher’s decision to bring Blue along underscores the strong bonds people can feel toward their dogs.
Fisher is suspected of murdering his wife and children and “it appears he didn’t want to murder his dog,” said Clive Wynne, an Arizona State University psychology professor and director of the Canine Science Collaboratory Lab.
Wynne believes that Blue likely would have followed Fisher into the forest if he walked off to kill himself. So the dog’s presence near the vehicle seems to suggest someone picked Fisher up, he said.
As for why Blue stuck close to the Toyota, “for a lot of dogs, the owner’s vehicle is home away from home . ... It’s base camp,” said Wynne, who is the author of “Dog Is Love: Why and How Your Dog Loves You.”
Another dog behavior expert, Nicholas Dodman, co-founder of the Center for Canine Behavior Studies, has a different theory.
He believes Fisher set off into the woods with Blue following him. The dog saw something moving in the bushes. His prey instinct kicked in. He rushed off to chase the porcupine.
Fisher kept moving, Dodman speculates.
Blue, with quills in the face, would have noticed Fisher was missing and returned to the only base he knew, the Toyota 4Runner. It would have been easy for him to find his way back to the vehicle because dogs have an amazing sense of geography.
Authorities don’t know how long Blue was alone in the forest. Dogs aren’t effective hunters and cannot fend for themselves.
Bellendier said Blue was hungry but looked healthy and wasn’t emaciated.
Blackmore, the veterinarian, doubts Blue was in the forest for 10 days, which was the time that elapsed between the murders and when authorities found the vehicle.
“I don’t think he was in bad enough shape to not have eaten for 10 days,” she said.
Blackmore said she is “no police detective” and doesn’t have a theory about what happened to Fisher. She believes Blue was near the Toyota because the vehicle was familiar to him.
“Even if he was out and got lost in the forest or whatever, I think the car would have been the logical place for him to go back to no matter where he was,” she said.
What happened to Blue?
Once the public learned that Blue had been left alone in the forest, the adoption offers poured in.
Blackmore was firm: He was not up for adoption. She didn’t reveal what happened to Blue at the time. But she will now.
“It was a heartbreaking story, being left in the middle of the forest,” she said. “The family asked if I would keep him.” So she did.
She kept his name, though they would sometimes refer to him as “duck” because he would make a funny, honking noise with his mouth when he settled down.
Blue became part of Blackmore’s family, joining two other dogs and a cat.
Blackmore, her husband and twin daughters and all the animals moved to a farm near the Missouri-Illinois border in 2011. Blue spent his days hiking in the forest with Blackmore and running with the horses.
He lived another 12 years after being found in the Tonto National Forest. He died about six years ago at age 14.
The family is left with wonderful memories.
“He was a great dog,” she said.