The saga of Oscar the Great Pyrenees is worthy of a Disney movie except there is no villain, no Cruella de Vil. And, if it takes a village to raise a child, it took a subdivision to get Oscar back home for his happy Hollywood ending.
“In so many of our cases, maybe even as high as 99%, when we have a stray the owner isn’t found,” says Gerri Yoder, director of the Henry County Animal Care & Control, which takes in between 3,500 to 4,000 dogs a year. “But with Oscar, it was karma, fate, the stars aligning — whatever — it all fell into place. Oscar is back with his mama, and all of us couldn’t be happier.”
Oscar wasn’t a stray. The dog was adopted about two years ago by Brooke and Ken Bailey, to be not only the family pet but a special companion for Ken, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after 28 years in the military. On June 5, Brooke was in a serious car accident near Piedmont Henry Hospital, and in the confusion, Oscar jumped out of the car and disappeared. Soon after the accident, Brooke suffered a stroke, which hampered her efforts to find her beloved pet. Ken put flyers around the area and posted information on Facebook; Brooke called the shelter “so many times, they knew the sound of my voice.”
After three months, as Bailey began to lose hope, she started hearing reports of a “big white phantom ghost,” in Windsong Plantation, near where the accident occurred. For months Oscar roamed the subdivision where neighbors left food and clean water and tracked his wanderings on Nextdoor and via texting. It seemed he had a routine, visiting the same homes and restaurants and often staring into the windows of homes with dogs. “He wanted to belong to a pack,” says Mitzi Assing, one of the neighbors.
“Traffic in that neighborhood is absolutely awful, and there are all kinds of places where this dog could have ended up or been taken,” says Yoder. “We’d get reports about him, but he was skittish, out of his element. He wasn’t aggressive, but he wasn’t flopping on people’s porches. He was scared, but the neighbors kept trying.”
Oscar even eluded Assing’s sure-fire and time-tested way of gaining a stray’s confidence and capturing it. “I usually throw pieces of hot dogs to gain their trust, and then when they’re not afraid of me, I tie a large string to a Honey Baked Ham bone, and they follow me into my yard, and I close the fence. They love it when there’s a little bit of ham still left.”
But Oscar was so skittish that not even Honey Baked Ham work. Another neighborhood, Claudia Alvarenga, also spent months trying to rescue Oscar. “One day I saw him in front of my house and then the next day in front of a neighbor’s house. I started putting food and water out, and he eventually got used to seeing me. He would go to my backyard and look at me, and eventually, after four months, he trusted me. I was able to bring him into my house, and I called Mitzi.”
A self-confessed dog lover, Alvarenga wanted to keep him but was afraid that Oscar’s 100-pound body might accidentally hurt her small dogs, so she turned Oscar over to Assing to keep, but it wasn’t a good fit. “He’s such a soulful sweet dog, but my cat said no. I begged my husband because I wanted to keep him. I didn’t want him to go to animal control where he would be traumatized again.”
Instead, Assing called the Great Pyrenees Rescue of Atlanta, which since being spun off from Adopt A Golden [Retriever] Atlanta in 2010, has rescued almost 2,000 dogs. “Mitzi called us because she was concerned about stories she had heard about the shelter and didn’t want the dog to be euthanized before an adopter was found,” says John Heldrich, president and founder of the country’s largest Great Pyrenees rescue organization. “As much as we wanted to help rescue the dog, and we did, I explained that she had to contact Henry County’s animal rescue. Only then could we get Oscar. Mitzi understood and was comforted that if the owner didn’t show up then we would take Oscar and find a good home. But the owner did show up, and that almost never happens.”
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Yoder was grateful that the rescue advised the women to follow the law and turn Oscar into the shelter. Legally, a stray must be turned into a shelter and held for four days before the owner’s rights are terminated and it can be adopted. “Animals are considered property. Some people think that they are doing a good thing if they find a stray and keep it. It’s like finding a cell phone in a store. You don’t just take it; you turn it into the lost and found, and if no one claims it, eventually you get to keep it,” she says. “It’s the same with animals. There are a lot of kindhearted people or some rescue groups who think they are helping by keeping a stray. They don’t realize that someone may be looking for that dog, and unless it’s turned into the shelter, it will not have an opportunity to be reunited with the desperate owner. If the Great Pyrenees Rescue had not rightfully told Mitzi to turn Oscar into us, the owner never would have been found.”
But Oscar was turned in. A staff member recognized Oscar and called Bailey, who quickly came to the shelter. “Oscar saw me and looked like he knew he was in trouble, but I started petting him,” she says. “He started wagging his tail and was like ‘let’s go!’ so we went home. He’s made himself right at home again.”
Bailey knows she is one of the lucky few who gets reunited with a pet. Oscar is home and a little worse for wear. He had to be shaved to get rid of ticks and matted fur, and he now has a microchip, courtesy of the shelter.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
“I’ve thanked everyone numerous times,” she says. “Without that beautiful Windsong community, I would never have had him back. I knew because of the sightings that he was alive and the neighborhood was taking care of him, but it’s not the same as him being home. The whole neighborhood got together; they even had a party for us.” The neighborhood, for its part, formed an Oscar Nextdoor group so as to receive updates and share stories about Oscar.
Yoder hopes that the neighbors, if they find another stray, will quickly turn it into the shelter. “So many people have this view of the evil pound where we gleefully abuse animals,” she says. “It is always our goal to reunite the animal into the original home or find a new perfect home. We love animals, and to see an owner reunited with her pet after months was really heartwarming. I’m just glad there were so many people wanting to do the right thing for Oscar.”
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