A dog rescued from Taiwan and placed with a Burnaby family is now safe and sound after spending a month on the streets of Vancouver.
The dog's harrowing tale starts in Taiwan, when she was most likely hit by a car as a puppy and found limping. The woman who took her in named her Macie and had connections to Ocean Dog Rescue, a Richmond-based organization that takes stray dogs from Taiwan and places them in homes in the Greater Vancouver area. Volunteers with Ocean Dog Rescue found Macie a "forever home" in Burnaby with Cheryl Boegeman and her husband Ralph.
"Taiwanese people are not friendly to stray dogs," said Renee Hsieh, a volunteer with Ocean Dog Rescue who is originally from Taiwan. "Macie, when we found her, she was already hit by a car, and she was a two-month old puppy."
On Nov. 15, Macie arrived in Vancouver, but just eight days after she was placed with her family, she escaped from the backyard.
Volunteers from Ocean Dog Rescue began postering the neighbourhood and placed ads in local newspapers and on Craigslist, offering a $1,000 reward.
Al MacLellan from Petsearchers Canada heard about the case and got involved. The Langley resident specializes in tracking lost pets using his six bloodhounds and one Great Dane. But the days passed by, and still - no sign of Macie.
Hsieh was starting to lose hope until she received a call from someone who had spotted Macie around the Clark Drive and 15th Avenue area in East Vancouver. MacLellan traced Macie's steps, trailing her by a couple of blocks, but when he approached the dog ran off.
"She's a creature of habit, so she would travel a certain way every day," he said.
Macie was already a very shy dog in a new country, likely bewildered and now fending for herself on the streets. Most lost pets go into survival mode and become almost feral, MacLellan said. That's why they won't come when owners call them because their instincts tell them to be quiet in case of predators.
There were more attempts to catch Macie in mid-December, but she always ran off. MacLellan said the fewer people involved in tracking a lost pet, the better, because dogs know when they are being stalked.
"It just makes (them) more eager not to get caught," he said. "It's the opposite of what you would think."
MacLellan left a live trap close to where Macie had been seen, and they waited, but Macie was nowhere to be found. Then more people called in reporting Macie sightings near the Italian Cultural Centre on Grandview Highway. While many volunteers were losing hope, MacLellan never give up.
"I never stop, especially with a rescue dog. You can't leave the dog out there. What are you going to do?" MacLellan said. "I know I'm going to catch them sooner or later. It's just about outsmarting the dog."
And on Dec. 21, Macie finally fell into MacLellan's hands.
"I saw her coming down, doing her regular route," he said.
MacLellan parked on the side of the road crouching behind his van with a large net, tensing as Macie came barrelling down the road, not suspecting anything.
"As soon as she came right along the side of my vehicle, I just jumped out, and she didn't know what hit her," he said.
After a month on the streets, Macie was emaciated, dirty, covered in cuts and sores, and her eyes were sunken, but she adjusted to domesticity rather quickly.
Macie now needs to have a GPS collar before she can come back to her Burnaby home. Cheryl was thrilled to hear Macie was caught and is eager to have her back..
"It was the best Christmas present ever," she said. "The minute she saw me, . she started jumping up. When they opened the door, she jumped in my lap and started kissing my face. . She's a miracle dog."
Boegeman is planning to hold a summer barbecue to thank everyone who helped find Macie, and Hsieh was touched by the outpouring of community support.
"I got so many calls (from people) who care about the dog," she said. "The people in Vancouver are so warm, and they have big hearts."
For more on this story, see Jennifer Moreau's blog at www.burnabynow.com.
