MILLIE

June 28, 2022

BLUE dots: Millie’s footprints GREEN dots: new path RED dot: camp

A one-year-old, four-pound Chihuahua with a trembling fear of the outdoors survived four long nights and most of another day alone in a thunderous hellscape. Millie’s precious life hung in the balance between hot asphalt and fast traffic on southbound Highway 52 near Rural Hall, NC, and without the swift action of an alert traveler, we may have never known she was there.

Millie has the face of a fawn. She is a gorgeous girl with transparent, elfin ears and expressively intense eyes. Her former owner says she’s a little badass who picked fights and drew blood from a much larger dog who came to the family first and who, upon running out of patience, paw-pinned Millie to the floor which is why Millie had to be rehomed – a most heart wrenching decision for a single woman with a young child, both of whom Millie cherished.

_{(Vintage Chi image)}

Facebook was plastered with posts about Millie’s escape which happened five days after Brit gave her to a young gentleman with a deep, soft soul for animals and who she knew as a co-worker and friend. But Millie had other ideas. She escaped her new person that night by slipping her harness at a local event. Then she ran like summertime lightning. She bolted across four lanes of traffic and through a busy grocery store parking lot before being pushed by well-meaning people into the woods and up the hill from the northbound highway.

Millie showed up on my radar, but I didn’t become involved until Saturday afternoon. For me, it’s best not to step into a tracking situation unless someone asks for my help. And someone did.

Saturday is my husband’s favorite day of the week. His plans did not include a reconnoiter to Rural Hall early evening, but something about the location felt hinky to both of us so he rode with me for a first pass. Then he and rescue friend Mike – a man with good instincts and a desire to learn more about tracking – rallied Sunday morning at 6am to help me suss with more focus and to choose a viable location for the trail cam.

The camera picked up one large feral cat, one opossum and a late-night rendezvous involving three nefarious humans and a dirt bike but no little brown dog. By early Monday evening, I decided to relocate the camera. There had been no reported Millie sightings and none of us felt that Millie was hanging out in those desperate woods. The question was, relocate the camera to where?

Millie’s destiny and our good fortune were changed by one phone call.

A former schoolteacher, now the owner and founder of a local dog-centric business – a woman with good instincts and a desire to learn more about tracking – received a call from an old student who said she and her family were traveling southbound down 52 when she saw on the highway’s apron a little brown dog walking into the tall grass near an overturned highway barrel. The girl told Marie that she had seen her post about the dog on social media. Marie called me at 11:05pm, way past my normal bedtime. But I was up, wide awake, looking at maps and wondering in which direction to search for Millie.

Sometimes, all a tracker needs is one good lead.

The dark of night is a horrid time to track a dog, especially in a location as dangerous as a 70 mile-per hour highway. One wrong step, trip, or push and it’s over. Best to wait for daylight. Most dogs hunker down at night anyway, making themselves invisible to predators.

Tuesday morning at 6am, Marie and I met near the highway bridge, walked down the hill, across the curved entrance ramp and onto the exposed apron. Taking care to watch our footfall, we followed fresh tiny dog tracks to a dangerous spot near the construction barricades where Millie made a lifesaving decision to turn around. That’s one theory, anyway.

 A few minutes later, we spotted a little tootsie roll of fresh Chihuahua poo near a path through the tall grass where a tiny girl like Millie would choose to travel. Mike agreed to retrieve the camera from the woods and then joined me on the highway as Marie left to walk clients’ dogs and pick up scent items – a sweatshirt and stuffed toy from Millie’s former person and her child.

She was there, hiding in the tall grass and watching our every move. We couldn’t see her, but we all felt her. Our first united task was to figure a plan that would push Millie from the meadow of tall grass closest to the highway where her travel paths were and into the “on-ramp” meadow of tall grass where there was ample room to make her a safe camp. We knew if we made one wrong move or rushed our steps, we could inadvertently push Millie into traffic instead of away from it.

So, we made new paths. In single file –  one close behind the other like elephants, we methodically rolled down a line of tall grass using our arms, feet and legs. On our second pass, we cleared the grass by hand down to the red clay to give Millie soft footing and then made a spur to the right toward an unused dirt construction road where the trail cam would be placed. On the third pass, I laid in bacon to lure her down the new path and into camp.

Everything’s better with bacon, said every dog everywhere.

Millie’s camp was shaded by a hastily woven mat of tall, bent grass and lofted by the sweatshirt that carried the scents of her former home; the precious child, the other dogs, and the loving mother. Bowls of homemade food and fresh water flanked the entrance.

I bungeed the camera to an orange cone and pointed it toward Millie’s nest. Then, we stopped. We had been on the highway for almost five hours. It was time to go home and let the camera do its work.

The thing about focusing a trail cam in an area of tall grass that kisses up to a major highway is that it’s breezy to the point of turbulent. Ping…ping… ping. Repetitive alerts, dozens of pings sang the camera to my phone, yet the camera was capturing nothing but the movement of wind through the beautiful, tall buff oat grass. I turned on my phone’s “Do Not Disturb” feature, fell asleep for an hour, and woke up to 400 photos of amber waves of grain.

And three clear photos of a little brown dog.

When I called her, Brit jumped at the chance to help with what I felt in my bones would be the final steps in a successful rescue effort. She took every direction I gave without question.

“See the path directly in front of the trail cam? Walk slowly toward the opening and place this beach towel on the ground,” I said. “Now, very quietly lie down on your stomach and stretch your body out. Turn your head to the left and whisper if you see Millie.” I saw Brit’s eyes widen before I heard her speak and knew Millie was in camp.

“She’s napping on my sweatshirt.”

“Crumple the plastic bag and see if the noise will wake her up.”

“Yes. She’s awake and trembling.”

“Okay. Speak very quietly and gently to her. Yes? Now put some homemade food in your hand and extend it toward her.”

My heart leapt as I saw Millie’s pointed ears move through the grass toward Brit’s hand. She ate what was offered, then walked straight into Brit’s chest.

“Scoop her up, now. Hold onto her.” Millie watched calmly as I gently approached her and slipped a leash around her elegant neck. “Walk to the car now and get in quickly. I’ll close the door behind you.”

I gathered up the scent items, the camera, the bowls and bottles and towels. I thought about how hard it must be for this brave young woman who had loved Millie for the first year of her life to give her up not once, but twice. I witnessed Brit’s stoic goodbye as she left a beloved pet in the capable hands of temporary fosters Mike and Jim.

 “It’s the right thing to do for Millie,” Brit said for the fourth time as we said goodbye at her car. It will take many mantras for Brit’s heart to catch up with her head. “It was the right thing to do.”

A vet visit revealed a break in Millie’s hip – a fracture that required surgery and a plate. After four days of being loved up and watched closely in foster care, she was transported to Chihuahua Rescue in Raleigh where her leg was repaired by an orthopedist who specializes in surgeries on small dogs. Millie spent time in medical foster, and then chose her forever family where she is loved and spoiled, exactly as a small girl with a big story should be. 

So, how did Millie survive those four days in an inhospitable environment? Maybe she channeled her inner wolf. Maybe it was divine intervention or just plain good luck. Regarding her injury, the vet suggested she was hit by a car. But my intuitive friend Shawn feels that when Millie was walking down the apron of 52, she was blown off course by a fast-moving semi, tossed in the air by wind shear and then suffered the pain of a hard landing.

By Tuesday lunchtime, I knew we were getting Millie to safety before nightfall. Maybe I channeled my inner wolf. Maybe my divine animal guides told me. Maybe it was just plain good luck. Whatever it was, it’s clear that a well-timed phone call by an alert young traveler made all the difference for Millie. Plus help from the two dog-savvy folks who wanted to learn more about tracking and volunteered their time, and Millie’s person, a compassionate young mother who put Millie’s well-being first and who loved her enough to let her go not once, but twice.

Sometimes, all it takes is one good lead. One that’s right on time to swing the odds in favor of the happy ending.

Tracker Mantra: Just one good lead.