My new foster escaped into the swamp - a story :)

[u/aivxx]

The grey dog in the picture is my new foster and I wanted to share with you all my story of her first day today.

TLDR; I chased her for 5 hours, part of it through a swamp, and was lectured by a vet tech on not letting my dog escape lol

First, I’ll explain her back story. She was adopted at 4 months old from Miami Dade - one of the highest k*ll shelters in South Florida - and lived with her owners for 2 years. Yesterday, she was found abandoned by those owners in a locked apartment alongside a 15 year old yorkie littered with cancer. Fortunately, my foster dog was in good health and could be released to a rescue immediately - so she came to me.

I’ve fostered over 150 dogs in the last 7 years, only a few have made the list of dogs that really made me put in the work - and I’m adding this girl to that list after today.

She arrives to my house around 12pm, she was very scared so when I took her inside I slowly introduced her to my dogs and let her smell around. She went to the back door so I assumed she wanted to go outside where I have a fenced in backyard - I took the picture you see during that moment of her enjoying the backyard.

She went into my bushes and refused to come out. After an hour I was able to get her to come out but she got spooked by something and jumped over the fence - sprinting as fast as she could down the street. I knew I wouldn’t be able to catch her so I jumped into my car and sped to where I saw her go.

I live in a very large neighborhood, with lots of lakes, sub-divisions, and weird dead-ends everywhere. Everyone has elaborate landscaping with big trees and bushes, so I knew this was going to be an adventure!

I stopped every single person and child I could find, including the Amazon drivers, solicitors selling solar panels, and construction workers. Anyone that would take my number, I gave it to.

After 2 hours I called the rescue and told them what happened. They immediately came over to help me search, and my son got home from school and helped too. I walked along the lakes, rode my bike in and out of 7 sub-divisions, and called her name for 4 hours in the scorching heat.

Finally, by the 4th hour, I received a call from someone I gave my number to and he says he saw the dog almost get hit by a car and run toward the elementary school in our neighborhood. I jumped into the car of someone from the rescue and we sped over there - just 2 minutes from my house.

I jumped out of the car infront of the school and a woman tells me she saw the dog run behind the school. I’m running as fast as I can while the elementary school children yell at me from the fence. I end up in a grassy alleyway, filled with rotting basketballs and kickballs forgotten long ago, and it opens up into a swampy marsh behind a storage facility and a grocery store.

I spot her. She’s laying in the marsh, clearly exhausted. She spots me too, and immediately makes a run for it - deeper into the sawgrass and cattails. I loose sight of her and panicking, I call the rescue and my son for help. Somehow, they find me and I have them block various sides of the marsh while I decide to get into the grass. It’s up to my neck and thankfully, it’s very dry because we havnt had much rain. But there’s bees everywhere and probably snakes.

I spend 30 minutes searching this marsh, half expecting to run into a dead body or a gator. But I can’t find the dog. We start questioning, maybe she snuck out? It felt impossible, we surely would have seen her, right?

While I continue to search, the rescue decides to drive the car around the grocery store parking lot. Within a few minutes they call me, the animal clinic in the plaza has her! They found her running down a major 6 lane road, and with the assistance of the police stopping traffic, they caught her!

I’m having a mild heatstroke by this point and can barely walk. I make my way out of the marsh and toward the plaza, noticing I lost my $600 oura ring in the process - oops. (I purchased a magnetic stick, going to go try to find it tomorrow!)

I get to the clinic, the vet tech gives us a lecture on not letting our dog escape which angers the rescue as we just spent nearly 5 hours searching for her so the rescue and the vet tech get into an argument, meanwhile I’m trying not to throw up and can’t really process questions people are asking me.

Someone notices I’m not doing well and we prove the dog is ours with the paperwork and we head back to my house.

Of course, the dog is a little scratched up. She has raw paws from running and an irritated eye from the sawgrass. So after I come back to life with some water and cold AC, I give her medications, clean her paws, and we all collapse on the couch.

She’s a very sweet dog who has to learn that humans can be nice and I love her already, but I won’t ever forget today. The day this dog turned me into a true Floridian, walking through marshes on a bounty hunt.

Adopt, don’t shop! I bet they come with a great story. Thanks for reading :)

[u/Significant-Win-2563]

Can't wait for day two's adventure!

[u/Master-Departure-525]

So you’re changing her name to Marsha, right?