Several months have now elapsed since our last credible Olivia-sighting. We have gone up to six months before without a sighting and then come back strong, but I am not sure that will happen this time. A few of the most recent sightings reported that Olivia was - much to my surprise - in the company of a human! Our last track seemed consistent with that, so someone may have taken her in. While this is comforting in the sense that her new human could be providing her with the food, shelter, care, and love she needs, I wish there were some way to verify this. That way, I could end the search that has dominated my life for the past two years and, more importantly, know that she is and will remain safe and sound. No news might be good news, but it might not; but good news would definitely be good news (obviously), so I continue to hope for that.
On the off chance that the human lucky enough to be with Olivia is reading this, I ask that you please let me know she is ok and, more importantly, please (please!) take good care of her and give her all the love she so very much deserves.
In any case, I plan to continue the search, even if it is in a lull right now. I have checked relatively recently that many of the posters are still up in the areas of the last sightings and tracks, and I still field some calls that express interest, occasional sympathy, and sometimes information that unfortunately does not really help. Maybe one of these days, though, one of the calls will be a new, legitimate sighting and we can get back to making progress toward finding her.
In the meantime, I wonder.... Time and again, though, she has shown herself to be an incredibly resourceful, amazing survivor; so I continue to hope and trust that she is ok.
not-Olivia
This sweetie turned out not to be Olivia, but a picture like this with Olivia would be identical.
Sweet, lovey Livvie
My favorite picture of Olivia
Monday, August 27, 2012
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Olivia's New Stomping Grounds
Here is a map of the track Sam (and Salsa and Briana) and I did on Monday. We stopped after a relatively short time for two reasons: the pattern revealed that Olivia was making her usual circles, so we already had enough to know where she hangs out; and, speaking of hanging out, we found what we hope is her den. This part was particularly exciting because we haven't found anything we thought was a den on any of the ten previous tracks. Here's hoping that this means putting the feeding station in her new chosen abode will make it easier to get her to eat from it regularly, show up on the Livvie-cam, and finally catch her and bring her home!
Thursday, May 3, 2012
New Flyers & Business Cards
We're gearing up for a weekend of flyering after a recent sighting and a successful track of the lovely Olivia. Here are the latest files for those of you who are able to print copies and assist:
Monday, April 30, 2012
Hip Hip Hooray! Livvie Lives!
Hello everyone,
I am delighted to write with excellent news:
Olivia is alive and kicking (well, sniffing)!
For almost six months now, we've been in a dry spell, the longest one of the whole search (now 18 months, so the dry spell was fully 1/3 of the time since she's been lost). Then I got a call from someone who said he thought he'd seen her when he was driving along Potomac Avenue one afternoon. He thought she was a black lab at first, but when he got closer he saw that she was too big to be a lab. When I asked what she was doing when he saw her, he said she was just sniffing. (Olivia is nothing - except maybe elusive - if not consistent!)
He called me because he had seen one of our fliers, so thank you again to everyone who helped put up fliers during our big search party in December. I have tried to keep up since then, but I'm pretty sure it was the group effort that got us this sighting.
Anyway, Sam and I thought that the report sounded pretty credible, based mainly on the location - the last sighting was also near the Potomac Avenue metro stop; the description - she's really dark brindle, more black than brown, and if you were driving by and didn't get a good look and had to pick only one color, it would be black); and the activity - just standing there, sniffing, hanging out. Sounded like Livvie! That, coupled with the amount of time that has elapsed since the last sighting, made us really eager to have Salsa check it out and see if it was actually Olivia. There was, however, a complication: Salsa had recently had surgery (that went well) and wasn't allowed back to work yet. Her sister Briana is now certified to track, but she's not as good with older scents, so she might give us a false negative if Olivia had been there but too long ago for Bri to pick up the scent. Not to worry, though, we worked out a plan. We would have Salsa check for the scent (and by now she knows Olivia's scent so well that she barks rather impatiently when presented with one of Olivia's scent items) then, if she found it, we would (put Salsa back in the car and) take Bri there and have her track from that spot if she could. Even if she couldn't, though, the most important part would be finding out whether the dog the man saw was indeed Olivia.
We drove to the intersection the man had specified. It was a spot with a little park on one side of the street and, on the other, a strip of grass in front of the fence surrounding Congressional Cemetery. He had said she was on the same side as the cemetery, so we took Salsa there and she found the track almost immediately. (Yay Salsa!) When we took her back to the car and brought out Briana, she too found it right away and we started to track. We walked around that neighborhood and found one house in particular where Olivia had been (likely more than once, maybe a lot, maybe all winter....). She had gone under the porch, which would have provided shelter from bad weather and her most perplexing feature: invisibility. We spoke to the woman who lives there and she was wonderfully sympathetic, even agreeing to let us set up a feeding station. She said she'd heard something big (she thought it might have been a person) under there either last night or the night before.
It's pretty incredible: in two days, I have gone from wondering if I should assume that Olivia had been hit by a car or something because no one had seen her in so long, to having a confirmed sighting, successful track, and even a viable feeding station, complete with camera, set up! Of course, that leads back to another search phase requiring frequent checks of the feeding station to replenish the food, water, and treats and to monitor the pictures the camera is taking. It also involves, as ever, more fliering, business card distribution, and constant vigilance. That said, I'll take the work and extra responsibilities any day if it means it gets us closer to finding Livvie. As you know by now, I'd do almost anything to bring this sweet girl home! At least now I can keep the faith and keep up the search with renewed hope.
Thanks again, everyone, for hanging in there this long and helping with words of encouragement, fliers, money, feeding station checks, outreach, and everything else you do to help find Olivia. I especially want to thank Sam and Carmen, Karen, and everyone else at A Forever Home. I don't know how I got so lucky as to have you take on Olivia after she was already lost and keep up the search this long, but I sure am grateful!* I don't think I can adequately communicate how much I appreciate it, or at least not right now, so I'll just have to hope you know.
Laura
*In case anyone else wants to help out with funding, I'm sure A Forever Home will happily welcome your donation! There's a link to donate in the column on the right side, a little under the pictures.
I am delighted to write with excellent news:
Olivia is alive and kicking (well, sniffing)!
For almost six months now, we've been in a dry spell, the longest one of the whole search (now 18 months, so the dry spell was fully 1/3 of the time since she's been lost). Then I got a call from someone who said he thought he'd seen her when he was driving along Potomac Avenue one afternoon. He thought she was a black lab at first, but when he got closer he saw that she was too big to be a lab. When I asked what she was doing when he saw her, he said she was just sniffing. (Olivia is nothing - except maybe elusive - if not consistent!)
He called me because he had seen one of our fliers, so thank you again to everyone who helped put up fliers during our big search party in December. I have tried to keep up since then, but I'm pretty sure it was the group effort that got us this sighting.
Anyway, Sam and I thought that the report sounded pretty credible, based mainly on the location - the last sighting was also near the Potomac Avenue metro stop; the description - she's really dark brindle, more black than brown, and if you were driving by and didn't get a good look and had to pick only one color, it would be black); and the activity - just standing there, sniffing, hanging out. Sounded like Livvie! That, coupled with the amount of time that has elapsed since the last sighting, made us really eager to have Salsa check it out and see if it was actually Olivia. There was, however, a complication: Salsa had recently had surgery (that went well) and wasn't allowed back to work yet. Her sister Briana is now certified to track, but she's not as good with older scents, so she might give us a false negative if Olivia had been there but too long ago for Bri to pick up the scent. Not to worry, though, we worked out a plan. We would have Salsa check for the scent (and by now she knows Olivia's scent so well that she barks rather impatiently when presented with one of Olivia's scent items) then, if she found it, we would (put Salsa back in the car and) take Bri there and have her track from that spot if she could. Even if she couldn't, though, the most important part would be finding out whether the dog the man saw was indeed Olivia.
We drove to the intersection the man had specified. It was a spot with a little park on one side of the street and, on the other, a strip of grass in front of the fence surrounding Congressional Cemetery. He had said she was on the same side as the cemetery, so we took Salsa there and she found the track almost immediately. (Yay Salsa!) When we took her back to the car and brought out Briana, she too found it right away and we started to track. We walked around that neighborhood and found one house in particular where Olivia had been (likely more than once, maybe a lot, maybe all winter....). She had gone under the porch, which would have provided shelter from bad weather and her most perplexing feature: invisibility. We spoke to the woman who lives there and she was wonderfully sympathetic, even agreeing to let us set up a feeding station. She said she'd heard something big (she thought it might have been a person) under there either last night or the night before.
It's pretty incredible: in two days, I have gone from wondering if I should assume that Olivia had been hit by a car or something because no one had seen her in so long, to having a confirmed sighting, successful track, and even a viable feeding station, complete with camera, set up! Of course, that leads back to another search phase requiring frequent checks of the feeding station to replenish the food, water, and treats and to monitor the pictures the camera is taking. It also involves, as ever, more fliering, business card distribution, and constant vigilance. That said, I'll take the work and extra responsibilities any day if it means it gets us closer to finding Livvie. As you know by now, I'd do almost anything to bring this sweet girl home! At least now I can keep the faith and keep up the search with renewed hope.
Thanks again, everyone, for hanging in there this long and helping with words of encouragement, fliers, money, feeding station checks, outreach, and everything else you do to help find Olivia. I especially want to thank Sam and Carmen, Karen, and everyone else at A Forever Home. I don't know how I got so lucky as to have you take on Olivia after she was already lost and keep up the search this long, but I sure am grateful!* I don't think I can adequately communicate how much I appreciate it, or at least not right now, so I'll just have to hope you know.
*In case anyone else wants to help out with funding, I'm sure A Forever Home will happily welcome your donation! There's a link to donate in the column on the right side, a little under the pictures.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Another (very, very) near miss!
I just found an email in my spam folder from someone who sent along some pictures of a brindle dog found a couple of months ago. The sender thought it wasn't Olivia because of markings on the paws, and was right - it's not Olivia. Even though I was prepared by the comment, though, my reaction when I saw the first picture was, "Oh my God - it's Olivia!!!!" None of our other near-misses has looked so incredibly much like her as to elicit this reaction! I'm really glad the person noticed the paws because otherwise I would have been so sure we'd found her then be really, really disappointed to go get the dog only to discover she's not Olivia. (Still, my hope made me want to send back the ridiculous question, "Any chance her paws were bleached or that's white paint?" I know better, but I just really, really hoped it was Livvie.)
Here are the picture that I thought was Olivia and the one that shows it's not.
I'm posting this not because it is an actual lead, but just because this near miss was so exciting for me! Meanwhile, even though the fliers we put up on our huge search party in December didn't elicit any sightings, I'm going to try to put more up in case Livvie has been laying low but shows her sweet face again soon. Anyone want to help?
Friday, February 17, 2012
No Such Luck....
I'm really, really sorry to say that Bean, the dog at the Harford Humane Society, was not Olivia. I always like to go in person if I can, but this one was an hour and a half away. I was not able to borrow a car to get up there, so I talked to the staff person responsible for her there. As hopeful as I wanted to be, I actually didn't think it was her from the picture. First, Bean did look a lot like Olivia, but her brindle coat seemed more brown than black (whereas Olivia's is more black than brown), and - it's kind of hard to articulate, but - her face didn't quite have the same hang-dog look as Livvy's. Also, the shelter staff had estimated Bean's age to be about 5 and, if the vet's estimate of Olivia's age was right, she should only be about 3. Still, that wasn't a big enough difference to make me sure that Bean isn't Olivia.
Since none of that was dispositive, I talked to the caretaker there about some other details. The criterion I usually use to screen possible matches ruled Bean out. She has white markings but Olivia doesn't. I actually had him double-check and he said she actually has several white spots. There was one other factor that only confirmed it. Bean was becoming eligible for adoption, and the shelter staff brought her up front to the office. When I heard this, I asked about her demeanor. Apparently, Bean is friendly and well-socialized - he said he would not even describe her as shy, much less unsocialized to people.
So this potential lead ended up being a disappointment, but I'd always rather find out about all possibilities, no matter how remote. Unfortunately, we still haven't gotten any recent sightings, so please keep your eyes open, fingers/paws crossed, etc., and maybe our luck will turn around soon.
Since none of that was dispositive, I talked to the caretaker there about some other details. The criterion I usually use to screen possible matches ruled Bean out. She has white markings but Olivia doesn't. I actually had him double-check and he said she actually has several white spots. There was one other factor that only confirmed it. Bean was becoming eligible for adoption, and the shelter staff brought her up front to the office. When I heard this, I asked about her demeanor. Apparently, Bean is friendly and well-socialized - he said he would not even describe her as shy, much less unsocialized to people.
So this potential lead ended up being a disappointment, but I'd always rather find out about all possibilities, no matter how remote. Unfortunately, we still haven't gotten any recent sightings, so please keep your eyes open, fingers/paws crossed, etc., and maybe our luck will turn around soon.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Could it be Olivia?!
Yesterday I got a call from a shelter in Harford County, Maryland - about an hour and a half (by car) away from DC - about a dog they call Bean who looks incredibly like Olivia! It may or may not actually be Olivia, but this is the first exciting lead since our big search party in December. I am going to try to drive up there and meet this dog today, and I really hope it's Livvie! Fingers crossed...
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