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Dog reunited with family after escaping pet resort in Round Rock
The pooch, named Lucy, was missing for 24 hours before a local animal rescue organization helped find her.
ROUND ROCK, Texas - A dog has been reunited with its owners after escaping a pet resort in Round Rock and going missing for more than 24 hours.
Curtis Clark Hale, Jr. was packing up to head to his son’s wedding when he got a call that his son’s dog, Lucy, had escaped.
"When you’re driving up and down 79 looking for a white animal and there’s a lot of white garbage on the side of the road, it stops your heart every time you see a piece of trash," Lucy’s grandpa, Curtis Clark Hale, Jr. said.
After searching for hour and not seeing her at all, he met up with volunteers from Jack Jack’s Pack Street Dog Rescue. They had located her.
"We could see her hiding but not running, but she didn’t recognize me from a distance," Hale, Jr. said.
He said he was grateful to find her, but she wasn’t herself and she wasn’t coming to him.
"We could all see looking at her that she was still in that flight mode and not recognizing even who she is, it’s like they go back into a primal mode where their favorite person seems like a predator," Jack Jack’s Pack Street Dog Rescue founder Sasha Violette Aghili said.
She said yelling her name, throwing out food, and even walking around with squeaky toys was making it worse.
"Those things are just going to scare them off," lost pet recovery technician DaNay Monroy said.
They used a different tactic. "Get on the ground, on your stomach, or sit down, do not make eye contact, and just stay still," Monroy said.
That’s what they had grandpa do.
"We just guided grandpa and he was amazing, it was like he was a professional, he was army crawling slowly, he took his time," Aghili said, "She saw a cheeseburger, a piece of cheeseburger in front of her and he said, ‘Hey Lucy, you want to eat that cheeseburger, don’t you,’ and her little ear went up, one ear, and so we could see that emotional side of Lucy was coming back and she knew that was Grandpa and then he said, ‘You want to go home, don’t you Lucy,’ and both of those ears shot up and her little butt went back and forth and her tail was wagging and she ran to Grandpa."
Aghili said her team was going to stay for as long as it took.
"Now that I do this and this is my life, I will get those babies home," Aghili said.
Lucy made it to the wedding and the newlyweds thanked everyone for their help.
"It was definitely reassuring to hear and see that so many people cared about helping us get our girl back, and we just felt really blessed," Lucy’s owner Madeline Hale said.