A Miracle for Lena
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We picked Lena out when she was 2 weeks old. Checking again at 6 weeks we didn’t see anything to change our minds. Her dam was “Chrissy” ( Ch. Virshina Fireside glow) a bitch we have always loved for her conformation, intelligence, and sweet personality. We had seen and admired her sire “Fallon” (Ch. Virshina renaissance Korbel). Chris Bradley graciously let us pick from this litter. Lena is the spitting image of her mom, and as she grew we became more and more excited by her conformation. We really wanted her to be in sweepstakes, we thought she could win. We were so disappointed that she was 2 days too young for the Northern California Specialty.
The decision to go to the combined Sight hound Specialties in Lompoc California that July was not an easy one for our family. It was on the same weekend as Todd’s birthday, and a few days before our twenty fifth wedding anniversary. Only Lena made us consider it. This was her next chance at sweeps, and we knew her coat was going to drop any day. Taking the plunge, we filled out the entry forms, and arranged to meet with friends for the weekend.
Leaving for the show was much more of an ordeal than usual. We had a lot of obligations to finish first, and were exhausted and bickering between ourselves. The summer evening was hot as we set out, transporting dogs in our camper shell instead of our usual cab over camper. We were worried about ventilation so we kept the windows cracked.
Near midnight we stopped for gas in Stockton . Todd was admiring Lena and giving her lots of affection. Although we had had at least one Borzoi for many years, this was the first one he really raised. He had done the all night potty breaks, the feeding, training, etc. He was so crazy about this pup everyone in the family teased him. Laughing and talking, we loaded the dogs back in and headed for Lompoc .
Happily making future show plans for Lena , we sped toward Lompoc on I-5 at 70 mph. Ranching towns are few and far between in this desolate part of California , so we made no stops. We got off the interstate at Hwy 145, looking for directions to Lompoc . What we thought was a gas station turned out to be a HUGE cattle feeding lot. Before getting back on the road I checked the dogs. My male, Storm, was sleeping contentedly. Lena was gone! Checking the window I was horrified to find it all the way open.
It was 2 AM . Todd was sure she had jumped out when we got off the interstate to get directions. We called until we lost our voices, running back and forth across the overpass. No Lena . For three hours we called and searched this half mile section of road. No Lena . In all our years together I had never seen Todd like he was this night. He was filled with quiet desperation. I felt responsible. I had been the one so insistent about ventilation. At five AM we got back in the truck and slept on the seats, right there on the overpass.
At first light any hope we might have had vanished. To the west were barren hills rolling for miles toward the coast. There was no water, but plenty of coyotes. To the east was a vast cattle feed lot, and next to it was the California aqueduct. Carrying water to Los Angeles it has steep concrete sides, a death trap for a thirsty dog. Then there was the interstate. Looking down from the overpass I saw Todd running each direction of the freeway, calling Lena , but expecting to find her body. Back at the truck, raising his hands for emphasis, Todd kept repeating “I need a miracle, and I need it now!”
Knowing Chris was expecting us, I called her. Poor Chris, we ruined her day. She had to do crisis counseling before her first cup to tea! On a sudden inspiration I asked her to have Tom and Laurie Kasowski post Lena’s loss on the Borzoi list (The internet message board for Borzoi people.) Exactly what help I expected I can’t say, just that it was strangely comforting to be asking for it. I don’t actually recall meeting Tom and Laurie; when you’re new in the Borzoi would there are so many unfamiliar faces. Still I remembered their name from their postings, and I knew they lived in Southern California . I didn’t stop to think that they were going into the ring soon and had no convenient computer! As it turned out they called Barbara Skinner. She dropped everything in her life and posted it for us. These were the first of many people who reacted immediately to help. Most of those people we didn’t know personally at that time.
So began the seemingly endless search. Making crude posters, checking with local people, calling the shelters, all these turned into an exhausting, draining, futile burst of activity. Covering the Coalinga area we were struck that everyone said “If you lose a dog around here you’ll never get it back.” We assumed that if she jumped while the truck was moving she would have died, so we drove to Stockton thinking she might have jumped before we got back on interstate. Heading back in the late afternoon, silent, we scanned the road for her body. We repeated the same search in Stockton . Finally overcome with exhaustion and heat, and fearing for the health of our other dogs, we slipped into the LaQuinta motel across from the gas station where we had last seen Lena . Finally able to talk and cry, we slept. It was Todd’s’ birthday.
Admitting defeat two days after losing her we arrived home on Friday night. While Todd slept I got up and wrote my first message to the Borzoi list. Todd read it and felt it was too raw, too personal, to mail to the world. I deleted it. Trying again I made my first post to the list the next morning. Saturday was spent making phone calls, painfully unpacking show gear with memories of Lena everywhere. Todd went to work believing his pup was dead, wanting closure.
Saturday night I got the first responses from the Borzoi list. It began slowly, gradually gaining volume, until it became a flood of mail. Each carried a message of hope, a prayer, and a suggestion. From Swede, France , Australia , and all over the States, Borzoi people responded. They passed Lena ’s story to other breed lists, and to prayer lists around the world. It was an astonishing experience for someone like myself very new to the amazing power of computer communication. By Sunday morning I was reenergized by the strength of this concern.
I talked to Chris Bradley again. She told me that Shirley Zindler (the owner of Lenas’ dam) and her mom were going back to Stockton Monday to pass out flyers! Imagine a woman with a baby arranging child care to go look for our dog! It was amazing that she would go so far to help us with this seemingly hopeless undertaking. Chris herself was going Wednesday. Suzanne Deghi called and told me the first of many stories about dogs leaping from cars and surviving. A plan of attack was forming in my mind. I needed a good picture flyer, and I needed Lenas’ picture on the net so people all over could download it to take to their local shelters. Not being very good at computers I was frustrated.
Suddenly my mind clicked. Maggie and Joe Michael are people we met at our local all breed dog club. Their first Borzoi, Devka, was a bitch Lenas’ age. We and our dogs had become friends, and they had introduced me to the Borzoi list. They are both great with computers. I called and they dropped everything in their busy lives to spend the next 12 hours helping me. By the time I got to their house Maggie had already searched out the net for resources for lost pets. She had contacted a pet finding service, and got some information. Joe put Lena on his web page, and we made color flyers with Lenas’ description. To turn out hundreds of copies Joe got up at intervals all night feeding paper into the machine.
Things started to move rapidly. Susan Tinntori, in Southern California , and two people (whose names I lost) in Davis and Reno printed the web page and got it to shelters in case a trucker picked her up in the middle of the night. My oldest daughter and her husband heard the news and after checking the Sacramento shelters drove to Stockton where we faxed them the new flyer to cover the gas station area. I arranged to meet Shirley and her mom at the same La Quinta motel in Stockton on Monday. Sunday night at 11pm John Keane from Sherlock Bones returned Maggie’s message and spent an hour with me giving a free consultation.
John’s advice changed the way we made the flyers and gave us a philosophy that we feel was instrumental in finding Lena . This philosophy is that to find Lena we had to convince other people to help look for us. Consider that it was 125 miles between the two locations. If we had to cover an area 20 miles wide, that is 2,500 square miles! Johns’ plan relies on human nature. An unpapered purebred could be sold for $300. He reasoned that we must make it worth it for them to sell the dog to us. We must make it worth it for strangers to look for our dog, to report on their neighbors, etc.. His advice was to post REWARD $500 in large red letters on a color flyer. As he pointed out, if we didn’t get the dog back, we didn’t pay. If we did, we would be more than happy to pay the reward.
Monday morning we left to meet Shirley and her mother at the same LaQuinta motel we had stayed in earlier. The management was very helpful letting us use their lobby, their phone, and offering to help with flyers. Shirley covered Stockton taking flyers to police, fire, UPS, postal, garbage, and utility workers. We had enough for them to put one in every workers mail slot. Wow $500 gets peoples attention! Everywhere we went people really looked at the posters.
Todd and I headed south on the interstate covering every on/off ramp with 12 flyers. Word of easy money travels fast. Kids at bus stops, moms in grocery stores, truckers traveling through, all studied the posters and talked about looking for her. When we stopped at one motel along the interstate to give flyers to the housekeepers the front desk person asked “Is that Lena ?” Their family had already called and arranged to look after work!!! A motorist asked for a flyer at the Patterson off ramp promising she would take it to the grocery store. “Anyone around here could use that kind of money!” she said.
Shirley went South on Hwy 12 and put up posters at small towns. She taped flyers to the portable outhouses used by the farm workers in the fields. She hit Patterson and the other small towns late in the afternoon Monday.
We will never know who put up the fateful poster that Jose saw. He was leaving the fields after work and stopped for groceries in Patterson. He recognized Lena . When he got home around 6 pm he called Maggie.
When Maggie called us she said he seemed a bit confused by her questions. When she explained about Lenas’ tattoo he said there were numbers and letters but couldn’t read them to her in English. Since he had seen the picture we worried that perhaps we were being set up just to collect the reward. When Todd got Jose on the phone and explained the tattoo Jose started reading off h, 0, 1, ….WH. Todd was shaking his head no when suddenly I realized that Jose was reading the AKC number upside down! WH at the end was really HM. He had our dog! Turning around we headed the 2 ½ hours to Ceres which is 50 miles from the Interstate where Lena was lost.
We met Jose and his friends near midnight at an isolated crossroads. Following them to the house we phoned Maggie with their License plate, make and color of their car, etc. Our instincts told us this was dangerous. Maggie was to call the police if we didn’t call again in a few minutes.
We arrived to find Lena alive and walking! She had many injuries, but none seemed serious. The men told us of seeing her wandering a road near the interstate bloody and limping. They called to her and she came over. She shared their lunch. According to them she had been with them three days.
Something about the situation that night did not feel right. They never invited us in. After we gave the money to them Jose got in his truck and pulled to the back of the house. As we were pulling out all the house lights suddenly went off and the other men left by the back, jumped in the car, and sped off into the orchards! What an experience trading a dog for cash, at midnight , in an abandoned house! We will always wonder what the whole story was.
Naturally, I drove while Todd sat in the back holding Lena and talking to people. Calling Maggie and Chris was a celebration, one of the most joyous experiences I’ve ever shared. Afterwards we decided to head to the LaQuinta in Stockton where we were sure they would welcome us and share our relief. Settling into our room around 1 pm , we finally had a chance to celebrate. It was July 29 th, our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.
There was no doubt that Lena fell and rolled on concrete after leaping from the truck while traveling at high speed. It was amazing, but nothing was broken and she walked fine. She was covered with cuts, bruises, and abrasions, some of which were swollen and infected. Her face took the brunt of it. There was no hair in a large section above her right eye, and there were several deep gouges in her back skull. She was very dehydrated and had lost about ten pounds. All her bones stuck out, she looked like a fuzzy Saluki. Feces and urine were matted in her feathering, and she fleas. Worst of all our confident puppy was now very skittish and shy.
Overnight she drank about 4 quarts of water, yet when we took her out in the morning she never urinated. It took until noon before she finally needed to go. She was spoiled rotten by us and the motel staff. She got plain hamburgers and even some bits of donut. By the time we got home she was much less scared. After a bath, a vet check, and a decent meal of kibble, she settled gratefully on her rug for a long, long nap.
Today all the scars are healed physically and temperamentally. Lena shows no fear of people or dogs. She is out and about town with us, and going to obedience class again. The only remnant of her ordeal on the freeway is an extreme fear of large trucks. Needless to say she now travels in a crate. In late September we drove to visit Chris, Suzanne, Shirley, and all our friends in Santa Rosa to celebrate. Lena played and ran with all her sisters, brothers, and cousins.
This little red pup will always be special. Lena’s life has been blessed, she is a living miracle!
This story was written years ago. Lena has gone on to have an extensive show career, including 8 national specialties, with impressive wins and titles. She is still competing as a veteran with the same exuberance she had as a puppy!