Olivia is Still Missing--We Need Your Help

For those helping with the flyer event this weekend, make sure to dress warmly. If possible, please bring a roll of packing tape, slip lead, and smelly treats. If by chance we see Olivia, we can entice her to approach with the smelly food.

Our outreach has been successful! Check out the FOX news story on Olivia at:
http://www.myfoxd.com/dpp/news/dc/help-needed-in-finding-missing-english-mastiff-dog-named-olivia-120110/

There was even an article in the Examiner at http://exm.nr/i6xq6.

For the person who posted on our blog whether the Craigslist posting of a female Brindle was Olivia, thank you for letting us know. Unfortunately, it is not Olivia.

If you can help out this Sunday, please make sure to contact Debbie!


Olivia Search Team

HELP FIND OLIVIA--MISSING MASTIFF

PLEASE HELP BRING OLIVIA HOME!!!
It's been over a month since Olivia went missing. She's cold, tired, hungry and we would love to bring her home!
We need your help! We have a major volunteer effort this weekend to distribute and post flyers. Volunteers will work in team to canvas the neighborhood, talk to locals, distribute flyers and business cards, in order for us to generate sightings. If you can help, please contact Debbie.

WHEN: Sunday, December 19

TIME: 12:00pm - 2:00pm (approximate end time)

LOCATION: Parking lot near Ft. McNair and Coast Guard (2nd & V, SW)

CONTACT: Debbie (703.967.7463)

EVERYONE IS WELCOME! BRING YOUR FRIENDS, TELL OTHERS, THE MORE HELP WE HAVE, THE LARGER AREA WE CAN COVER!!

Thanks to the Examiner for helping spread the word about this weekend's event:
http://www.examiner.com/pet-rescue-in-washington-dc/search-party-to-find-olivia-on-sunday-november-19th

Thank you!

Olivia Search Team

I Street Sighting

Did anyone speak to a man who said he saw Olivia on Wednesday or Thursday around noon at a park on I street? One of the volunteers gave him a business card today and he said he had seen her and called (and he knew her pre-rescue name, "Chopper"). He also said she was not injured ("fine") and still had her harness and collar on. The strange thing is that I did not get that call, nor did the volunteer whose number is listed on my voicemail message. Still, it is more good news! This is consistent with her new routine (it is right along the track), and it is now our our most recent sighting!

(If you did speak to him, could you please let me know? Thanks.)

Oh and here is a map overlaying all of the tracks run so far by Sam & Salsa of Pure Gold Pet Trackers:

Click the map for a larger view

Two (Good) New Developments

My last post tried to recruit people to go along on Monday's track. Though I was still out of town at the time, the track went really well: Salsa (the tracking dog) followed Olivia's scent for 4 miles and found her water source! As is apparently her habit, Olivia chose a restricted area as it's on the waterfront on Coast Guard property. (She doesn't have approval, but that doesn't bother her one bit. It's actually the third military site she's chosen: first Navy Yard, then Ft. McNair, now this.) Thanks to one volunteer's connection there, we got approval to put up a feeding station there and check it regularly.

There's also an even more recent development: Thursday afternoon, another volunteer was handing out business cards at the Waterfront Metro stop and she found a woman who saw Olivia on Tuesday night between 8 and 9 across from the CVS at 4th and I Streets. The woman did not approach Livvie because, surprise, surprise, she thought she was a pit bull. (Of course, for me that would be a reason to approach the dog, but not everyone shares my love of pitties.) Anyway, it was clearly Olivia because the woman noticed her nipples, which are still evident from her recent pregnancy. She said she was just wandering, which amuses me. Here we are looking for her frantically at all hours and we see nothing, but other people who don't care see her just aimlessly going along, apparently not trying to hide. So it goes.

I will put up a feeding station there today, but now there are several, so I need help checking them, ideally twice a day. Please let me know if you can help. Also, I still really need people to help put up flyers. Olivia covered a lot of ground, much of which we had not flyered before, and very few flyers are still up even in the areas we did flyer. Handing out business cards is obviously effective, as it got us this most recent sighting. Maybe we will be able to track again based on this most recent sighting. In the meantime, please let me know if you can help in any way, whether it's printing flyers or business cards, putting them up, checking a feeding station or a shelter, or helping me keep up with calls and emails to make sure people stay aware of her situation and watch out for her.

Thank you very much!

Search and Track Party Tonight!

Hello! Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving! I am actually on the way back to DC from the midwest, but fantastic volunteers are continuing efforts to find Olivia before I arrive. Tonight at 6, meet at 6th and Water Streets SW. There's a parking lot there; actually several, but if you get there and can't find other people (or if you have other questions), please call Karen at (240) 723-6893.

I got a call several nights ago from someone claiming to see Olivia and wanting the reward, but he didn't give a location sufficient for us to find them. What's worrisome is that he also said she had a broken leg. I don't know whether any of what he said is credible or not, but it's entirely possible that she's injured and it's definitely true that the weather is colder, so finding her feels even more urgent now!

We are planning to have another search tomorrow, time t.b.d. I will be back by then and will participate in the search, but if you have questions or need to contact someone about this in the meantime, please call Debbie at (703) 967-7463. By the way, we should soon have a fund-raising / donation link on the blog as well!

Thanks again for your help and hope to see you out searching!

More Good News!

No, I didn't mistakenly post this message twice - we do have yet another sighting! Last night I got a call from a security guard in a parking lot at 6th and Water. He'd seen olivia 5 minutes earlier! I got there as fast as I could and he gave me really good, specific information and little Leah and I set out after her. Leah's not quite up to Chewy or Salsa's level yet, but she did clearly follow a scent for a block or so to the walkway a little bit back from the waterfront walkway. After that, I think she just ran around sniffing whatever she wanted. Anyway, we didn't find Olivia and after a little while we stopped looking 'cause it was dark and I was by myself. But we're so close! Wouldn't finding her be something for which to be thankful?! (Actually, I'm thankful just to know that precious, sweet girl and to have met all of you great rescue-dog people helping me find her, but her homecoming would be wonderful!)

p.s. I have to leave town today and I'll have limited email access, so forgive me if I don't get back to you right away. I'll also post a list of people who will be around in case you need to contact one of Livvie's buddies before I get back.

Another Sighting - Need Outreach and Weekend Help

Yesterday I went out with Sam and her dog Salsa again to try to find Olivia's scent in her (now 3rd) new neighborhood. Unfortunately, the information we had from the sighting wasn't specific enough to give us a particular place to start. Without that to focus her, Salsa decided to turn her attention to hunting squirrels instead. It was pretty frustrating because I knew she had been around there somewhere but, because we didn't know exactly where, we couldn't search anywhere. (Salsa may be a great tracking dog, but she's still a dog, and there were tons and tons of squirrels!) We may have found Olivia's scent at some point, but we couldn't tell the difference between excitement from that and frenzy over the millions of squirrels running around, so it was basically a waste.

When that didn't work, we drove around putting up posters at major intersections in the area. We were starting to do smaller intersections when I ran into some people hanging out outside a building and asked them to watch out for Olivia. Much to my delight, one of them said, "I saw that dog yesterday." I asked her several specific questions to get the information we would need to track her from there or at least put up a feeding station:
What day and time had she seen her?
Where - On which corner of that intersection?
What was she doing?
Did you see her leave? Which way did she go?
The more information we can get from each sighting, the closer we'll be to finding her.

This time, I was even more encouraged, partly because it confirmed the earlier sighting, but mostly because it gave me much more specific information. That was where my luck ended, however, because it was way too late to start tracking then, so it was a waste of a trip for Sam (and a waste of the time and money for me). Speaking of money, I have been meaning to start fundraising to finance this search. When I offered to foster Olivia, I made sure that the rescue would cover all of her medical costs because, though I have the time and ability to foster, that's partly because I am unemployed, which keeps me from being able to pay for all aspects of her care. I didn't want to be an irresponsible foster-mama and take her on when I couldn't provide what she needed, but I thought as long as her medical costs were covered, I could provide her basic food and other everyday expenses. I did not think to ask who would pay for dog-search costs if she ran away - I have never lost a dog before, so it didn't even occur to me, nor did I know how incredibly expensive it could be.

Now, several hundred dollars later (with no end in sight!), I am essentially on my own. Unfortunately for me, her rescue is not helping at all (though the other day they did send a helpful suggestion that I put up fliers). Anyway, I am sorry to have to say this, but I do not have any more money to spend (much less to spend on Olivia's search), so I need to find outside funding. Does anyone have any experience fundraising? (I have exactly none.) Is lost-dog-searching in the budget for any rescue that might be willing to help out? Do you have any other ideas for how I can pay for this? I would hate to have to forgo further efforts that might help her and have her suffer just because she drew the unlucky foster parent who couldn't afford a more extensive search.

Here comes my usual plea: please help put up posters and hand out business cards in her new area (basically SW, south of the Southwest Freeway and west of South Capitol Street). I know (and thank you to the) many of you have already put up lots of posters (as have I), but unfortunately, she keeps moving, so now we have to put more somewhere else. I have loads of posters and business cards; I just need help distributing them. I am going to put more posters today (and also Sonia is going to help me put up feeding stations), and I will try to spend some time handing out business cards at the Waterfront Metro stop, but I can only do so much.

Finally, I have to leave town tomorrow for a week. (!) I hate to go while Olivia is still out there, but I planned this trip to visit my family for Thanksgiving long before I even knew about Olivia and I don't think I can cancel now. This means, however, that I will need people here to cover for me in case of a sighting or (if we're super-lucky) someone has her and we could go pick her up. I will still be on-call 24/7 - it is my phone that's on every flyer and business card - but is there someone here whom I could call if I need something in DC while I'm gone? It may end up being no work at all; I just don't know. Is anyone going to be around over the holiday weekend who wouldn't mind going to look for her / set up a feeding station if someone sees her or to get her if someone has her? If so, please let me know. As usual, it would not need to be for the whole time - I could divide up the weekend by days or even parts of days if necessary. Anyway, please email me if you can do this.

Thank you for hanging in there with me (/Olivia) and continuing to help and care!