I know; I promised not to do any more columns about dogs for a while.
That was before I saw the fliers.
Perhaps you’ve seen them – some 200 of them, all over East Boise, the BSU campus, the Greenbelt …
“Lost dog. She is our best friend. Please help us.”
I have a good idea of how the people who wrote that feel. Two of my recent columns were about our family’s dog, who died in September. We were crazy about her, and it’s obvious from reading the fliers that the owners of the lost dog feel the same way about her.
The dog’s name is Daisy, and her owners are offering a $1,000 reward for her return. There may have been larger rewards for lost pets, but if so I’ve never seen one. Clearly these people love their dog. And, as a fellow dog lover, I wanted to meet them.
Their names are Steven Moore and Kristi Bronkema. Daisy went missing from their East Boise home the day before Thanksgiving. They were careful to keep the back yard gate shut, but on the fateful day a service technician left it open. Steven and Kristi didn’t know that when they let Daisy out of the house the next morning.
“We let her out to go potty,” Steven said. “Kristi was on a conference call so it was a while before she went out to the back yard to let her in. She called her name and she didn’t come.”
“I freaked out,” Kristi said. “I started calling her name frantically. I was afraid she’d get hit by a car. I went next door and asked the people there if they’d seen her, then got in the car and drove the street.”
Almost immediately, an alert neighbor posted a picture of Daisy on a neighborhood website and asked “whose beautiful dog is this? She’s really friendly.”
“I went to her house right away,” Kristi said. “Unfortunately she didn’t bring Daisy in. She said later that she was so sorry she didn’t do that.”
“But we’re not blaming anybody,” Steven added.
Daisy wasn’t wearing her collar when she got out of the yard because they took it off at night so she’d be more comfortable sleeping.
“People who saw her might have thought she was a stray because she didn’t have her collar on,” Kristi said.
Daisy’s friendliness might also have contributed. A Husky mix, she’s one of those dogs who loves everybody. She’d have hopped right into the car of a friendly stranger.
I asked her owners to tell me more about her.
She’s two years old. Steven and Kristi have had her for a year and a half. They don’t have children, and “she’s pretty much our daughter,” Steven said.
Kristi described her as having “a lot of personality. And she’s really affectionate. She loves to cuddle and snuggle.”
Smart?
“Really smart,” Steven said. “She knows all the commands. She knows how to shake hands, sit, stay, lie down … Puppies can be rambunctious, but she wasn’t that way at all. When we taught her to sit, we only had to show her a couple of times and she got it.”
When they first got Daisy, she didn’t know how to climb stairs. They taught her by putting doggie treats on the steps.
“It’s like having a child, watching them learn and grow,” Steven said.
They’ve searched relentlessly. Steven works nights, starts looking for her as soon as he gets off work and says he’s logged over 100 miles walking in his neighborhood, on the Greenbelt, in the Foothills, even in Canyon County.
They’ve done social media posts and created a Daisy website accessible by scanning a bar code on their newest fliers, which have neon ink and glow in the dark. They even hired a company that uses tracking dogs to help with the search.
Unfortunately, Steven said, Daisy “isn’t chipped and hasn’t been spayed yet, either. We’d planned on getting that done. We’d just got new jobs and were saving up the money for it, and then she went missing.
“We’re pretty sure somebody picked her up because no one’s seen her since that first day. Maybe if whoever found her has bad intentions, like trying to breed her, they might just bring her back and take the cash instead. Cousins, aunts and uncles helped us come up with the $1,000. If we could, we’d do $10,000.”
“Because she went missing the day before Thanksgiving, we think maybe someone who was traveling found her,” Kristi said. “That’s our fear, that they might have picked her up and taken her home to wherever they live.”
That’s why Steven has been pounding the pavement as far away as Nampa.
They’re gratified, maybe even a bit overwhelmed, by the response to their efforts.
“The community has been so amazing,” Steven said. “Everyone has been so friendly and kind. We’ve had people go out looking and put up posters. I get five to seven calls a day from people asking if we’ve found her. We can’t thank them enough for taking time out of their busy lives to help us.”
“We try to think that a good person has found her and not someone that wouldn’t treat her well,” Kristi said. “When we think about that happening we break down and start crying.”
“I hope that right now she’s at a house with a family and that they do the right thing,” Steven added. “I understand that kids get attached to a dog, but we need her back. If they bring her back to us we’d be more than happy to have the kids visit.”
Here’s hoping that whoever found Daisy reads this and does do the right thing. I told Steven and Kristi that if she is found and returned, it would surprise me if the person who did it actually claimed the reward.
“That’s what everyone has been saying,” Steven said. “They say that most people wouldn’t take the reward, that it would be enough just to bring your dog back to you.”
There were no tears during our interview. They say they put on a brave face in public, but “behind closed doors we shed our tears and hug each other.”
If you see Daisy – or if you have her – please call them at 1 916 534-0774.
I asked them if they’d get another dog if Daisy isn’t returned.
“No,” Steven said. “I don’t think we’d be able to handle another dog right away knowing that our Daisy is still out there. We just want some closure. The hardest part is not knowing. Is she lost, out in the cold and dead, or does someone have her? It’s driving me crazy.”
Tim Woodward’s column appears every other Sunday in The Idaho Press and is posted on woodwardblog.com the following Mondays. Contact him a woodwardcolumn@gmail.com.
Tim Woodward 