Seipert pet no worse for wear after two-week Central Oregon adventure
BY MARA STINE
The Gresham Outlook, Aug 26, 2008

Wally, the lost but found basset hound, is the thing of Disney movies and children’s books.

After two weeks of wandering in Central Oregon, Wally reunited with his Sandy owner a reunion made possible by a lot of luck, coincidence and a few degrees of separation between Gresham City Hall employees.

Heidi Seipert was camping and four-wheeling with her husband, Scott, and their two children, Audrey, 10, and Ben, 6, in rural Wasco County over the Fourth of July weekend when their two dogs took off chasing something.

Initially, “we weren’t too worried,” Heidi said. The campsite was in the middle of nowhere and they were miles from the nearest road, so she didn’t think a car would hit them.

“We thought they’d come back,” she said.

Throughout that day on Saturday, July 5, they kept an eye out while riding around on all-terrain vehicles. But by evening, the dogs still hadn’t returned.

“It was really unlike them,” Heidi said.

The family made signs out of paper plates and posted them in the area, with an extra large sign on Road 48. They also posted them at Sportsman Pub & Grub in Wamic about 8 miles away.

At 9:30 p.m., a man left a message on Heidi’s cellular phone. He’d seen the signs and found Ozzy, her chocolate Labrador retriever, walking on Road 48. But he hadn’t seen Wally, their basset hound.

Ozzy was about 2 miles from the campsite, so Heidi and her family focused their search for Wally there. They looked until 5 p.m. on Sunday, July 6, but with still no sign of the dog, Heidi made the heart-breaking decision to leave without him.

“I had to go home but I was devastated,” she said.

She tried to think positively.

“I thought it might be a day or two, but someone would find him,” Heidi said. Although Wally wasn’t wearing his collar, he had a microchip allowing any vet to identify his owners.

Every day, Heidi thought today would be the day someone would call.

But nobody did.

Midweek, she drove the two hours back to the campsite and spent all day yelling his name “WALL-E!” into a megaphone.

Still, nothing.

Heidi checked with nearby campground hosts, animal shelters and the local sheriff’s office.

Nothing.

As the two-week mark approached, Heidi accepted the worst.

“I just realized that he wasn’t coming back,” she said. “That he’d probably been eaten or hit by a car.”

On Thursday, July 17, Heidi, who works as a records clerk at the Gresham Police Department, got an invitation from a coworker Jill Mick to a barbecue at her parent’s Gresham house.

Mick’s parents were spending the weekend in Rock Creek at their vacation home.

“That’s where Wally disappeared,” Heidi said. Jill immediately called her parents Jim and Susan Clark, who works as a payroll coordinator at Gresham City Hall to put them on Wally alert.

“I really did not think they would find him,” Heidi said.

But they did.

It was very early, about 6:30 a.m. Sunday, July 20, and Susan and her husband were on their front deck drinking coffee. Susan had been craving a campfire since the night before when bloodthirsty mosquitoes forced her inside, so she took her coffee out back to build a morning campfire there.

But her dog Katie, a yellow Labrador retriever ran out of the house toward a neighbor who walks her three dogs next to the home every morning.

As Susan approached the neighbor, they laughed about Katie’s predictability.

“Oh, your dog’s fine, but I’m not so sure about that one,” the woman said, gesturing to a brown basset hound behind her. “It showed up in my yard yesterday, ate all the dog food and followed me here.”

Susan took one look at the dog and went berserk.

“Oh my God!” she cried to her husband. “Honey, it’s Wally.”

Hearing his name, Wally’s ears perked up.

“All of the sudden you could just see this change, like Oh my God, somebody knows me,’ ” Susan said.

She took him inside and called her daughter, Jill, who called Heidi.

“They found him,” Jill squealed.

Heidi, who was working, didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Who found who?” Heidi replied.

“They found Wally,” Jill said.

As Heidi recalls, she was in shock. She thinks she cried a little.

Susan’s friend offered to drop Wally off at Heidi’s home in Sandy, but “that wasn’t going to fly,” Heidi said. She made the two-hour drive to Susan’s house in record speed.

When Heidi pulled up, Wally was on Susan’s back porch.

“Wally, your mommy’s here,” Susan told the dog, who didn’t move a muscle.

But as Heidi walked toward him, she called his name.

Wally sprang up and ran her way as fast as his short little legs would carry him.

“The way he was howling, it was like he was telling her all about what happened during his journey,” Susan said.

Heidi estimated that Wally walked between 6 and 8 miles from the campsite and Susan’s house. He had giardia, another gastro-intestinal parasite and a cut paw, but had only lost 3 pounds from his solid 70-pound frame.

After nearly two days of sleeping, the once exhausted pup is back to his playful self. Heidi, meanwhile, still marvels at how all the pieces that led to Wally being found fell into place.

“It really is amazing,” she said. “It’s just a pretty neat coincidence and we’re happy to have him home. So happy to have him home.

Oh, and one more thing.

“I will never, never ever go anywhere without his collar on again,” she said.

END OF ARTICLE

Editorial comment………………..from Cat

Well dear readers, there you have it. A feel good story. This is a great example of why you cannot let a basset hound off leash in the middle of nowhere. Their noses will get the best of them. Basset hounds usually get the bad rap of being lazy couch potatoes but the fact is, a basset hound can out distance a marathon runner when on a good scent. (Oh, by the way, all scents are good to a basset hound)!

I am thrilled that Wally was found wandering on his own in Oregon. Good boy Wally! Just look at that face.

More scouring the internet for stories later…..Cat, Chaps and Emma

P.S. You would have to cart me off to the looney bin if Chaps or Emma were lost in the Oregon wilderness.

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