A shy two-year-old beagle with large, sweet eyes provided an adventure for the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria that its staff and volunteers won’t soon forget. The dog, who had come to the AWLA from partner Potomac Highlands Animal Rescue in West Virginia, was so fearful that the staff sent her home with a volunteer so she could become more comfortable with people. Known as Maizee, the beagle was on a walk on Yoakum Parkway a few days after Christmas with her foster “mom” Nora Cole when she bolted, her purple leash trailing behind her. To Cole’s dismay, Maizee had vanished.
AWLA staff sprung into action. Signs picturing Maizee were posted in the neighborhood and on Facebook, and AWLA Animal Control officers and other staff and volunteers formed search parties to comb the area. “The response from the shelter staff and volunteers was really amazing,” Cole said.
As the search area widened and flyers went up in Alexandria’s Overlook community, calls of possible sightings of Maizee started to pour into the AWLA. Images from wildlife cameras set up by Fairfax County to monitor deer in the nearby woods showed that Maizee might not be the only beagle on the loose — there were others running free out there. Abbie Hubbard, AWLA’s deputy director who was heading up the search, soon spotted one of them, a pup called Rosie who had been missing from her home in the area. Hubbard grabbed her before she could run and returned her to her worried family.
The next step was to set up a humane trap near where Maizee had been sighted, and Overlook neighbors joined in the effort, even inviting staffers and volunteers into their homes to warm up. But the trap failed to lure Maizee; it was time to call in outside help.
Hubbard turned to Dogs Finding Dogs, a nonprofit based in Baltimore that uses trained dogs to search for lost pets of all kinds. The group counseled Hubbard that search parties aren’t generally effective. “One of the most difficult things to get across to people is that once they are out on their own, their pets probably won’t come to them even if they are called,” said Anne Wills, founder of Dogs Finding Dogs. “At that point they are all about survival and have the mentality of a fox or other wild animal. They are frightened away by people.”
Dogs Finding Dogs helped Hubbard use information from the citizen sightings to plot on a map Maizee’s likely routes. That data pointed to the Overlook neighborhood, where food for pets and feral animals and hiding places were available. A larger trap was placed in a spot behind a row of townhouses where Maizee was frequenting and baited with a chum trail of smelly catfood and rotisserie chicken. Next, on the advice of Dogs Finding Dogs, staff members cut up a sheet that one of Maizee’s puppies had slept on and laid the strips on the ground to create a strong scent trail to the trap.
On Jan. 8, as the weather turned frigid, Hubbard and Cole split the duties so they could check the trap every three hours. During the evening shift, Cole approached the trap and peered into it through the dark; she could tell that some kind of animal was confined inside. A flashlight provided by a nearby resident illuminated the trap. “I believe I squealed,” Cole said. “It was Maizee!”
Cole hasn’t forgotten the look on the dog’s face when she realized she had been found after two weeks on the run. “It was a combination of dejection and relief — she just sank right into her blanket,” she said. Cole had only been fostering dogs for the shelter for a few months when Maizee escaped but wants to continue fostering. “I wouldn’t give it up,” she said. “It’s the best thing in the world.”
But that wasn’t the end of the beagle adventure. Over the weeks of searching for Maizee, AWLA staff had learned of a third beagle, named Kai, on the loose in the neighborhood who had gotten away from a beagle rescue group. Again, it was Hubbard to the rescue, with the aid of a trap, a camera and newly gained wisdom.
Hubbard was exhausted but gratified after more than two weeks on beagle patrol: “One of the coolest things for me was to see how the staff, volunteers and community all worked together to bring Maizee and her friends home.”