A Salmon Creek-area woman is back with her missing dog after a group walking their dog heard and found hers stuck almost nose-deep in the mud at the bottom of a steep hillside.
Jamie Clark and his dog were walking with his daughter and her friend along the Salmon Creek Trail on Sunday when they heard some yips in the distance.
Clark’s 12-year-old daughter, who has been able to get coyotes who den in the area to call back, tried some yips and howls to reply. What they heard in response sounded more like a dog, Clark said.
“I almost dismissed it, because people’s dogs are barking all the time,” Clark said.
Still, he figured he should check it out, so he ambled up a hillside to try finding the noise. When he got to the top, he could clearly hear the sound echoing off something below him, so he went back down.
He found a dog, a Newfoundland-Chow mix, on the other side of a chain-link fence.
“It’s kind of a mucky, swampy area down there,” he said. “I could tell at that point there was a dog in there.”
He waded through the muck, and had to get about 25-30 feet away before he could actually see the dog, who was caked in mud.
“She had been holding her head up to keep her nose from down in the mud,” he said.
After some doing, he was able to pull her from the mud, drag her through the brush, pick her up and throw her over his shoulders to make the climb back up the hill toward his daughter, who was on the phone arranging more help.
“I was pretty covered in mud. Luckily I’d put on a really grubby old jacket,” he said. “We were probably quite the sight.”
They live nearby, so they brought her home and cleaned off the dog in a bathtub.
It took a while for her to relax her front legs and lay down. “She was, I think, in a bit of shock,” he said.
Once the dog, 15-year-old Sally, calmed down, she slept for about three hours straight.
By then, Sally’s owner, Bridget Moeller, had reported her dog missing and gone online to post her information.
She had just bought a cellphone to help her with tracking and posting information when she got word that Clark had found Sally. Sally has since taken a trip to the vet, and she’s doing a lot better now, Moeller said.
“She’s enjoying all the attention. We took her down to where Jamie found her and they got her on camera for the news and all that,” she said. “She’s loving it.”
Moreover, Sally is on some pills, and that means treats, Moeller said.
“She’s sore, but she’s back to her old self,” Moeller said. “She was nosing at the baby gate, and I said, ‘Didn’t you learn anything?'”
Her family adopted Sally when the dog was about 5 years old, and she’s developed a storied history of being willful and curious, despite all the fencing and baby doors Moeller has set up.
“She’s been known to be an escaper as long as we’ve had her,” she said. “Every house we’ve ever lived in we’ve always had to adjust to her maneuvers.”
“She’s talented.”
Clark said he’s found six or seven other loose dogs while walking around the Salmon Creek Trail, and his dog has gotten loose a few times, too.
“So we’ve kind of been on both sides of that coin,” he said.
He pointed to all the help he’s seen from people on local social media community webpages, through Facebook and Nextdoor, as a reason all those dogs made it home.
It wasn’t clear how Sally got loose, or how she ended up in a muddy marsh at the bottom of a cliff, Moeller said. She was thankful Clark made the effort.
“From what it looks like to me, it was pretty crazy what he had to go through to get down to her,” Moeller said.
