An ad hoc community effort last week led to a happy homecoming for a pair of wayward dogs and two relieved Bristol dog owners.
With both dogs safe and secure, Patti and Ed Gwara of Bristol say there is a long list of strangers and friends who need to be thanked for their help in recovering their wayward pets.
“We’re from Connecticut originally,” Patti Gwara said. During the search, she spoke to her daughter on the telephone.
“I was telling her how amazed I was at how many people were willing to help out complete strangers,” Patti Gwara said. Elsewhere, people “could see a dead dog on the side of the road and they wouldn’t stop to help.”
“Places where we came from, they wouldn’t care,” Ed Gwara said. “It’s just not the same down there as it is up here.”
The tale began Dec. 4 as Patti Gwara was returning from a morning of Christmas shopping. Arms laden with gifts, she stopped at The First, where she works in the operations department.
Taking advantage of a briefly open car door, Gwara’s two dogs, Coco and Dozer, escaped and Gwara would spend nearly the next 48 hours searching the roads of Bristol and Damariscotta for her missing pets.
The Gwaras, Bristol residents since 1996, adopted Coco and Dozer from the Knox County Animal Shelter in 2005 and 2009, respectively. Authorities seized both dogs from their former homes as a result of abuse and neglect.
After Coco and Dozer’s escape, “I felt like a really bad doggie mother,” Gwara said in a Dec. 13 interview at her Bristol home.
“They’re out there. You don’t know where they’re at. They could get hit by a car,” Ed Gwara said. The couple endured “sleepless nights” Saturday and Sunday, he said.
“I sent a text message with a picture of the dogs to anyone that I thought would be in town that day,” Patti Gwara said. She called Damariscotta Animal Control Officer Mark Doe Saturday evening.
For the remainder of the search, Doe acted as the Gwaras’ point of contact, relaying information about sightings of the dogs to the Gwaras.
“Trying to catch up to somebody’s dog can be more traumatizing to [the dog],” Doe said. Instead, the Gwaras, constantly on standby, followed up each of Doe’s tips.
“A lot of people saw the dogs,” Patti Gwara said. “We weren’t seeing them and it was frustrating.” Finally, on Sunday morning, Carol Taylor, a resident of Westview Road in Damariscotta, brought Dozer in from the cold. Until that point, the dogs stayed together, but Coco “was not so trusting,” the Gwaras wrote in a letter to the editor of The Lincoln County News.
All day Sunday, the Gwaras, with the help of their friends, Dean and Bonnie Knott, continued the search. “[Bonnie Knott] spent the entire day with me Sunday,” Patti Gwara said.
“They were on foot, in the car, in the woods…” Ed Gwara said.
Sunday afternoon, Barbara Freeman saw Coco “resting in her yard” on Stonewyck Lane in Damariscotta – the next road south and across Rt. 130 from Westview Road. Freeman told Patti Gwara not to get “too excited… because as soon as [Freeman] approached [Coco], she took off into the weeds,” Gwara said.
Sure enough, Coco once again “eluded capture,” Gwara wrote, but the Gwaras had another ally in their search. For the rest of the day, Freeman checked in periodically to monitor the Gwaras’ progress.
The Gwaras also enlisted Officer Jennifer Mitkus of the Damariscotta Police Department, who undertook some searching of her own and kept in touch with the Gwaras throughout the ordeal.
Also Sunday, the Gwaras distributed flyers to area businesses, including The Animal House on Bus. Rt. 1 in Damariscotta. The business agreed to post the Gwaras information on their front door and on their Facebook page.
At 6:43 p.m., The Animal House posted a description of Coco, including her most recent whereabouts and the Gwaras’ contact information, on their Facebook wall. At 8:38 p.m., Tammy Lee, a New Harbor resident, posted the next sighting.
“It’s a very funny story,” Lee said Dec. 14. Driving home after a day of skiing at Sunday River, Lee “saw this dog sitting on the side of the road,” she said. “It was really cute. Its head was cocked. It was staring right into the headlights of the oncoming traffic.”
“This isn’t right,” Lee thought at the time. She pulled over and approached the dog, but Coco ran down a nearby driveway.
Lee assumed the dog lived on the driveway. At home, however, logging onto Facebook, she read The Animal House’s Facebook post. “I saw him about an hour ago on Rt. 130!” Lee wrote in the comment box. She called the Gwaras to pick Coco up, but again, by the time the Gwaras arrived, Coco was gone.
Lee returned to the area Monday morning, Dec. 6, in the midst of the first major snowstorm of the season.
“I just felt like, after looking at the dog’s face and seeing how cute it was… I used to have a dog myself. I thought I’d help her out,” Lee said. “I had gone through the experience of my dog running off and my heart would just sink to my stomach.”
Lee called Coco’s name for about half an hour. Shortly after returning to her car, she saw something moving about 200 feet away and again called Patti Gwara.
Treacherous road conditions during the snowfall sent dozens of cars sliding off the road and kept police and emergency crews busy. “My biggest fear was that the dog was going to get hit by a car,” Lee said, so she gave hand signals to passing traffic to slow down.
A friend, Paul Cunningham, saw Lee and Coco and pulled over, but the shy Coco headed in the opposite direction. Patti Gwara arrived, called Coco’s name and, finally and fortunately, found Coco on the Bristol side of the Damariscotta-Bristol town line at about 11 a.m.
Ed Gwara joined the rescue crew moments later and “Coco had lots of kisses for both of them!” Lee wrote in an e-mail.
With both dogs safely back at home, “I had a long list of people I had to call and talk to,” Patti Gwara said, including Doe, Freeman, Mitkus and others who assisted in various ways.
Coco and Dozer steadily, if slowly, traveled south along Rt. 130 in the general direction of the Gwaras’ Benner Road home. “They were trying to figure out how to get home,” Ed Gwara said, but without a scent to follow, “they were probably confused.”
This is Coco and Dozer’s second escape. The first time, the dogs left the Gwaras’ property (their invisible, electric fence was out-of-order, it seems) at 1 p.m.
Dozer, again, was the first to return after his capture on the Biscay Road near McDonald’s. Coco made her way back of her own accord. “She followed her scent back to the house,” Ed Gwara said, arriving before 5 p.m., less than four hours after her escape.
The Gwaras don’t usually send photo cards for Christmas, but this year they thought it was appropriate. Everyone on their mailing list – including a few late additions – will receive a card with the same cell phone picture Patti Gwara sent at the outset of the search.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you is all I can say,” Patti Gwara said. “It would have been a very sad Christmas had they not been found.”
