Missing Pickles

“Look at the Labs,” 15-year-old Molly Vavrina said from the passenger’s seat.

She and her mother, Kathy, were driving home from dinner at a friend’s house on December 3, 2003, when they came across a pair of Labrador retrievers ambling along the side of the road. When Kathy, a professional breeder, spotted them, the realization struck her like a blow to the mid-section. “Those are our dogs,” she said.

They stopped the car and got out. Camine, Dallas, they called out. Both dogs came running when they heard their names. But that was only two. There were two others, Kathy Vavrina knew, who had most likely escaped from the same fenced-in yard.

When the Vavrinas reached their front door, about a quarter-mile from where they had just collected their dogs, Conner, the only male of the canine foursome, was waiting patiently on the porch for his masters to return. One-year-old Pickles, the last of the group, was still missing.

Kathy Vavrina owns and operates the Franklin Hills Labrador Retriever Kennels in Harpursville, New York. Before she ran off, Pickles was a critical member of the Franklin Hills family—she was the kennel’s breeder bitch. Devastated over their loss, the Vavrinas enlisted neighbors and friends in a search that lasted weeks, with no sign of Pickles. By the thaw that came the next spring, Kathy had lost hope of ever seeing her dog again.

A family pet is lost every two seconds. So reads the brochure published by Avid Identification Systems, Inc., a manufacturer of animal ID microchips. That statistic is based on estimates from the Humane Society of the Untied States, according to Dan Knox, a veterinarian who works for Avid. “In the U.S., we get almost 1,000 calls a day (regarding lost pets),” Knox says.

Kim Macklin, Marketing Administrator for the American Kennel Club’s Companion Animal Recovery (CAR), offers similar statistics. “We have a recovery every seven minutes,” she says. Three million animals are registered with the CAR database.

The chances of reuniting lost pets with their owners are much higher when chips are involved. “Most shelters scan incoming stray animals (for microchips),” Macklin says.

The Front Street Dog Shelter in Binghamton, New York—just a few miles from Franklin Hills—has been tagging dogs with the microchips since 1997, according to manager Vicki Bugonian. She adds that responsible kennel operators and pet owners, such as the Vavrinas, have been doing the same.

When a dog is processed into the shelter, the microchip is injected under its skin using a hypodermic needle. Each tiny chip contains a unique identification number. When a handheld scanner is passed over the animal’s body, the number is revealed on the machine’s LED readout. Anyone who adopts or purchases a pet from a participating shelter or breeder can register that companion animal with a national database (there are currently three). Then, if that pet is lost, its owner can be more easily identified and contacted. Most veterinarians can also perform the procedure for a fee—usually between $30 and $50—on dogs, cats, horses, birds, and reptiles.

The skittish little mass of matted hair that lived beneath a pile of discarded railroad ties had neighbors stumped. “She was queer looking,” says Fred (last name withheld by request). “With her long hair, she didn’t look like a dog.”

Residents of the Johnson City neighborhood—also located within a few of miles of the Front Street Dog Shelter—noticed the furry creature sometime during the winter of 2003. “She wouldn’t come near anyone,” Fred says. So he began leaving food and water near the animal’s makeshift home. Before long, he noticed that other local residents were feeding it, too.

“I left a note that said, ‘If leaving food, please call me.’ Someone did.”
Fred discovered a network of concerned people who were caring for the animal. “One lady would sit and read the newspaper to it,” he says. “She called it Tony.”

Fred reported Tony to the town dog catcher, who failed in an initial capture attempt. But a policeman’s ticket—issued to one of the caretakers who had parked illegally near the railroad tracks—prompted officials to try again. This time, Tony was caught and delivered to Bugonian at the shelter. Fred and his wife arrived soon after that.

“I never saw anyone get here so fast,” Bugonian says. “They were very concerned about that little dog.”

A scan revealed that the dog had no identity number.

Fred kept a close watch on Tony. “When I sat with her at the shelter, she’d hide under a desk,” he says. But eventually, she began to show signs of trusting. After being screened by Bugonian, Fred was determined a suitable owner for the nervous little dog.

Along with a new home, Tony now has a new haircut—a 12-pound toy poodle was discovered under all that hair. She also has a new name. Fred says, “She used to run on the (train) rails to keep from being buried in the snow. A friend said that she looked like tumbleweed running down the tracks. So I named her Tumbleweed.”

She also has also been injected with a microchip, so she’ll hopefully never have to experience life on her own again, even if she does get lost, though that isn’t likely as long as Fred is there to care for her.

“How she survived, I don’t know,” Fred says. “I sit in my chair, hugging her, and I say ‘Why did you stay there? Why didn’t you just come to my door?’”

One late-November day in 2004, a Binghamton area family noticed a strange sound from beneath their house. Searching under the porch, they were shocked to discover a dog nursing three newborn pups.

They notified Bugonian at the shelter.

The next day, Kathy Vavrina received a phone call from Bugonian. A Labrador retriever had been brought to the shelter and scanned. The identification number matched up to a dog that was registered to Vavrina. On December 1, 2004—two days shy of one year from Pickles’ disappearance—Vavrina was reunited with an old friend.

“We cried,” she says. “All my friends were crying. She was just one of the dogs previously. Now she has a special story to tell.”

Pickles’ homecoming came with a bonus: the three mixed-breed pups she gave birth to under a stranger’s porch within just three miles of the Franklin Hills Kennels.

“Many people would have left those mutts behind because it’s an embarrassment (to a breeder) to have one of your bitches have a litter like that,” she says. “I’m just so happy to have Pickles back and to me it’s not an embarrassment that this happened. Actually, these are very cute puppies.”

“I told my other dogs, ‘These are Franklin Hills puppies. Don’t you be laughing at them.’”

Vavrina has since found permanent homes for all three pups. She encouraged the buyers to microchip their new pets.

“I always recommend it to everyone,” she says.

If dogs could speak, Pickles would surely do the same.

- Gary Ingraham