“Home Scent Home”: Lost Lucy’s four-day 80-kilometre round trip an amazing tale of canine capability
/By Andy Sparling
Missing two-year-old dogs don’t tend to survive outside for four days and nights in Belleville’s early November weather. But Lucy did. And it looks like Lucy may have made it on foot across a good chunk of southern Hastings County — and back again — before crawling into bed and waking her beloved owner Kristy Sinclair in an almost magical return home.
The magnificent Lucy standing in her full glory. Photo credit: Andy Sparling
Lucy is a big dog. A canine behemoth, which is a cross between a Great Dane and a Bull Mastiff. She’s a lovable, good-natured girl who brings daily happiness to Sinclair and her family. “She is a most loving and caring animal, and she’s bigger than I am. And she really has no idea how big she is, especially when she’s trying to sit on your lap or get on the bed.” Lucy disappeared on Hallowe’en night. It was pouring rain, and the wind was “awful,” according to Sinclair. Somehow, Lucy got out of the fenced backyard not far from Highway 2 and Montrose Road while the family was out trick-or-treating and visiting friends between 6 and 9 p.m.
Maybe someone let her out, or perhaps she was spooked by something and jumped the fence. She was able. The search began shortly after the family got home. It would involve hundreds of people; helpful neighbours, Facebook shares, the participation of about a dozen incredible volunteers from the lost-pet organization “Lost Paws,” and half-a-dozen folks halfway across Hastings County who phoned the family about sightings of an animal that looked a lot like Lucy.
For Sinclair and husband Tim, it was the beginning of four sleepless days and nights; the couple and their three children never stopped looking.
Canvassing nearby neighbours that evening, several reported they had seen Lucy running by, but couldn’t catch her. Sinclair called the OPP (the Animal Control office was closed) and continued driving around.
At 1 a.m., someone called to say that a dog had been hit on Highway 2 not far from where they live. Rushing to the site of the accident and almost sick with worry, Sinclair says it turned out it wasn’t Lucy.
“We started posting on Facebook and on every missing animals’ website I could think of. The next day we got a call from Lost Paws (the federally-registered community organization whose aim is to link lost pets with their families, free of charge). To Sinclair, they were “amazing.”
“They created flyers, put up posters, dropped supplies off at our house so we could make our own. The next day, we got a call from someone who saw a dog fitting Lucy’s description emerging from a field in the Stockdale Road area (about a two to three hour “human” walk from the family home).” In other words, a long way.
To get there, Lucy would have had to cross one of North America’s busiest highways, the 401.
“There’s an underpass in the area, so being a large a dog, it was possible for her to get out there, and it wouldn’t have taken her too long. So, we made like the mail deliverers, and driving slowly from mailbox to mailbox, we put flyers in all of them. We did field searches on Friday night and Saturday. Volunteers from Lost Paws were watching the rail line and using trail cams. We covered the whole area. There was no sign of her.”
Owner Kristy Sinclair with Lucy.
Sunday morning, Sinclair got a call from someone about 40 kilometres away in Tyendinaga that a dog fitting Lucy’s description had been spotted on York Road near Shannonville. That day, another three calls came in from the Shannonville area about possible sightings.
For all of the search, which continued round the clock, the couple left the back gate and patio door open at home just in case Lucy found her way back. They put pieces of clothing and the dog’s bed outside the house in the hope she might pick up familiar scents. They also drove around the neighbourhood and shook articles of Sinclair’s clothing out the window of the moving car, again for the possibility that Lucy might get back on the right trail … a tactic that has worked in similar situations.
Back to work on Monday for the couple. There was another call from someone who saw a dog that looked like Lucy going through a fence, and that it may have injured its back leg doing so.
Finally, Monday evening, the exhausted Sinclair’s, who hadn’t slept in days, had to go to bed. “Lucy has been very helpful with some health issues I’ve been having recently, and I just don’t sleep well without her.”
“Before I went to bed Monday night, I shut the patio door because it was getting really cold in the house with it open all the time. But then I got up later and opened it again … I mean, what if she came home, and it was closed?”
Back to bed. A little later, a mini-miracle takes shape.
“About two o’clock I felt this pounce on the bed, but my seven year-old daughter Brooklin was with me that night, and I just figured it was her rolling over. Didn’t think much of it. But then I could hear this really rough sniffing noise in my ear. I was in a panic. I wasn’t really expecting it to be Lucy, so I’m thinking maybe a coyote or something else had come in.”
“And then the sniffing stopped, and I heard this cry. I thought, there’s no way. So, I put my hand out, and I could feel her, but I’m like, it can’t be. So, I turn on the light, and there she is! Laying on top of me in bed! She’s just sitting there looking at me with those eyes.”
“I cried. I said, ‘where have you been?’— expecting she’s going to answer me. And I saw that she had actually grabbed her toy bunny before she jumped on the bed, and brought it to me to announce ‘I’m home!’”
The whole family had a good cry. Recently, the family’s other pet dog, Tank the bulldog, had died.
Lucy was in pretty good shape, all things considered. She’d suffered an injury to her back leg, and was noticeably lighter for a lack of food, and she was exhausted. She did nothing but sleep for the first day or so back. Otherwise — same old Lucy.
Sinclair says knowledgeable searchers figure she was on the go the whole time. It’s likely that she followed the rail line west from the Stockdale Road area, and then south through field after field to the Shannonville area. And then back again? Hard to believe.
According to the Mother Nature Network, 30 kilometres isn’t really that far when the wind is right and the dog has a good sniffer.Dogs probably have 40 times the scent capability of humans. They really know the neighbourhood … fire hydrants, bushes, sidewalks and fences. They’re also leaving distinct scents behind every time they put a paw down.
But beyond the direct smells, dogs also use overlapping circles of scent to figure out where it is that they want to go. Maybe the smell of a familiar person or animal is in the air, or a trash can or stop sign that's on its walking route. Any of these scents may have pointed Lucy in the right direction toward the smell she was really after — home.
And the urge to get there had to have been all-consuming.
“She is so sensitive to peoples’ needs and moods,” says her awestruck owner. “Especially to Brooklin and me. She’s our protector.”
