Hi everyone! I am almost halfway back home to NJ, and wanted to take a minute to acknowledge and thank everyone involved in this search! I know that details were a little scarce while I was on site, and that was a necessary precaution to keep our capture areas quiet, and to keep Claire feeling secure in her area. To recap quickly... Upon arrival, together with the on site search group we went over the aerial and organized our plan of action for the day, starting by confirming sightings that were most recent, and carefully determining travel routes, and methods that Claire used to go to and from a fairly large radius. We were cautious not to go running through the woods and risking flushing a scared dog into another area and losing track of her location, or worse into the traffic of the interstate. The goal was not just to confirm where Claire had been, but more importantly where she has gone, or would go most often to increase the chance that our traps would be found. The first night we had 4 traps and cameras at each location. While grilling a large piece of meat nearest on of our traps, at 1 a.m. one of Claires most dedicated on site volunteers Craig was driving home from work and saw her crossing the road in our direction! Sue and I immediately disappeared into our vehicles strategically placed out of the way and out of eyesight, to hopefully witness the travel route she took. Unfortunately this crafty smart girl was on a mission, and her mission did not enter our view! I decided to stay the night in that parking lot, monitoring the area, and checking every 2 hours or so that the traps were empty of wildlife, or filled with a Claire! Nothing in the a.m. upon checking cameras so the plan continued for the next day... We needed bigger traps in case Claire had been trapped after having been a stray, and if she were trap savvy I needed to be sure that we were prepared to step it up while we knew where she was traveling. The amazing team networked through this page and beyond and the outpouring of volunteers bringing us traps and cameras at ALL hours of the day or night was incredible! We set forth exchanging narrower traps for the wider larger versions we received, placing those in the most probable areas, and set up a large kennel enclosure trap if the standard box traps did not work, plan B was already in effect. We received so many cameras that each of our 6 traps was under surveillance!! We grilled that night as well in efforts to narrow down her travel to one specific area, where we had both a standard trap and the enclosure set. At around 2 a.m. we cleared out and I retuned at 5 am to check each location, nothing yet but clever Claire found our goodies not long after and was in the trap around 8 am! I can say that there may not be a greater feeling than seeing the ever elusive Claire behind bars :) I want to express my enormous gratitude for all the people involved in this search, I am truly and deeply touched and appreciate all the wonderful comments and thanks to me, but I have to point out that it takes a village, with all of you on this page, with the multiple people on site working overtime for these girls, well before I arrived... Thank you. I was blessed with the greatest of people to work with on site, from dragging traps all over Dodge City, to setting up cameras at 11pm, to grilling meat, I am honored to have worked with this group, and to have made many new friends. I also feel totally blessed to have been able to be apart of the reunion, to meet Seth and see his reaction to see Claire, and that of Claire and Molly, well I admit, I was fighting back tears. Now that these sweet girls Molly and Claire are safe and home, I want to direct prayers and thoughts for Olivia. I pray she can soon join in the family reunion, and I cannot wait to see those photos. Thank you all for all of your help, it was truly a pleasure to have been involved with such a large group of wonderful people. Lost Pet Professionals, Jordina Thorp Ghiggeri Brodie, Ruckus, and Bruno
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 02:47:21 +0000
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