Video capturing the moment a dog reunites with her owners after being lost in the wilderness for nine days is sure to warm your heart.
But it’s a moment Kacey Wall and her partner Chris feared might not happen after nine days of searching.
“There were extreme lows where you kind of sit there and you’re thinking how does a dog even survive out here?” said Kacey Wall.
The ordeal began Sunday, Aug. 11 during a hike from Raven Lodge on Mount Washington to Circlet Lake in Strathcona Park when suddenly, Beira, the 2 and a half-year-old Husky/Shepherd cross wasn’t at Kacey’s side anymore.
Wall searched all day but couldn’t find her dog.
“Gut-wrenching,” said Wall. “When you’re up there and you see how incredibly vast the area is and how wild it was I’m like, I don’t want to leave her.”
So she and her partner Chris would go back out every day. Nine days of searching the rugged mountains of Strathcona Park.
“We were hiking dawn to dusk some days. It was just you know 25 to 30 kilometers a day of hiking for both of us,” she said.
There had been a tip that Beira was spotted the first day, on a logging road in the Cruickshank Canyon about 3.5 kilometres from where she went missing so that’s where Kacey and Chris focused their attention.
Then last Tuesday morning Kacey started frying up some bacon on a camp stove on a logging road near the Cruikshank River and making noises with squeaky toys that the dog would recognize.
“That’s when I heard kind of a high pitched happy bark and that’s when my heart leaped into my throat and I’m like that’s her,” said wall.
And moments later Beira came out of the brush and tentatively made her way to Kacey and Chris.
“When I saw her come up the road you lose it, it’s like oh my God that’s her,” added Wall.
Beira lost eight pounds in nine days but was given a clean bill of health by a veterinarian later that day.
Dean Stoltz
