Talk about being a survivor. Roughly two weeks ago, on June 27, Cheri Glankler, a dog rescuer in Garden Valley, Idaho, posted on Facebook’s Lost Pets Boise page in hopes of reuniting a rescue dog that had come in in rough condition. The dog, a Chesapeake Bay retriever, was obviously elderly, but she was also skin and bones and covered in fleas. After 20 years of rescues, she wasn’t the least bit surprised.
A Miracle
What she would be surprised to find out, shortly after making that post, was that the dog had been missing for nine months through one of the harshest winter’s in recent memory up in the rugged Idaho Mountains. As it turned out, the worse for wear pup was a 12-year-old named Mo who belonged to the Cameron family of Boise. Found collapsed on a ranch near Glanker, Mo had been missing since September 2016 when she and her family were in the area to do some hiking and hunting.
Animal Rescue
Purportedly Mo was familiar with the area, from prior trips there, and she’d never just wandered off before, so the family stayed on for three months searching for her. When winter hit its stride, as much as they missed her, they had to come to terms with the fact that, at her age, in those conditions, there was probably little hope of them ever seeing her again. It must have come as a complete shock, almost a year later, to hear that she’d been found alive.
Survivor Stories
Glanker is said to have confessed that in all the years she’s been rescuing animals, she’s never come across a survivor quite like Mo. The moral to the story is not to give up hope if you’ve lost a pet. We almost routinely hear of dogs and cats showing back up into their former owner’s lives these days after years of absence, albeit seldom after surviving Klondike–like conditions at an advanced age. As in this case, the use of social media can often make it happen. So, put on a brave face and keep on looking.
