I was about 100 yards from the house when I heard some extremely loud music coming from a neighboring house. The house is way back in the woods, so the volume control must have been pegged. Shortly after that I heard Connie calling for "Lottie." Lottie is a four-and-a-half-year-old bitch we co-own with Jo and Howard Weiner. She had lived with them most of her life but came back to us in February. Connie continued calling for Lottie and she was beginning to sound panicky. I headed for the house, where I met Connie. She said she had turned her back for a second and Lottie had disappeared. We both toured the house, kennel and the edge of the woods. We are surrounded on three sides by thick woods. We found nothing.
I hopped in the truck and slowly drove around the area and also down the highway to the St. Croix River. I thought that if she wanted to head back to the Weiners she would wind up at the Stillwater bridge. Nothing. When I returned to the house, Jeff, our son, who was home from college, was dressed in jacket and boots ready to search. As we stood there talking, Jeff spotted what might be a Shepherd cutting across the corn field about 400 yards out. I ran toward the field calling Lottie. She stopped, looked our way and then broke into a run toward me. She got about halfway back and then stopped dead and just stared at me. No amount of calling would get her to move. Finally, she just casualty trotted off into the woods. Jeff and I searched the woods for about an hour and found nothing. Jeff jumped into his car and drove around to the highway on the other side of the woods and found Lottie walking on the shoulder. Traffic was very heavy, so Jeff got out and tried to slow everybody down. Most cars slowed to see what was going on, but one didn't. A Caravan doing about 50 mph struck Lottie and threw her into the ditch. She lay there for about a minute and then limped into the woods. Jeff and I caught up with her, but she never let us get closer than about ten feet before she bolted deeper into the woods and then would lie down until we got too close. This went on until we finally lost her. Jeff and I went back to the house to tell Connie what was going on.
We knew at this time Lottie was injured, no idea how serious, it was raining and about 40 degrees and she was totally exhausted and very frightened. If we didn't find her before darkness set in, she would surely die somewhere in the many miles of forest surrounding our house.
Connie decided we needed Alex and his dog "Asco." Alex is Aleksey Vyatkin who, with his wife Irina and their daughter Mariya, immigrated to the United States from Russia about five months ago. Along with them they brought their extraordinary German Shepherd Dog, Asco. I suggested that Connie call the Animal Inn where Alex is doing some training and see if he had Asco with him. The Inn is only fifteen minutes from us, so it would save a lot of time if he and Asco happened to be there. They were. We dispatched Ann, Jeff's girlfriend, to the Inn to bring Alex and Asco back. On arrival, we took them to the place we last saw Lottie. There Alex asked me some questions about Lottie, her age, sex and how long since we had seen her, which was about an hour. We had brought along a blanket that Lottie slept on. It was full of her scent. Alex put the blanket down for Asco to smell and Asco literally breathed through it for about 30 seconds. Then Alex gave him a command and Asco took off into the woods with Alex close behind. I tried to keep up, but I felt like Refrigerator Perry chasing Dion Sanders. I lost sight of Asco but did see Alex racing to my left with the blanket held out in front of him. I headed where it looked like he was going. There I saw Asco standing over Lottie, not letting her get up. He wasn't growling, biting, but rather casually making her stay put. (We had been told previously that Asco was trained to find and hold.) Lottie snapped at Alex once, but by then I had gotten there.I said her name and reached out to her. She looked at me and laid her head back down on the ground as if to say, "I give up, you caught me."
I put a leash on Lottie and got her up. She wouldn't put weight on her left front leg, so I picked her up to carry her to the road. She never cried out or objected to my handling her. Although I was as gentle as possible, it isn't easy to carry an injured dog through dense forest.
When I got her to the highway, we loaded her into the van and headed for Southview Animal Hospital about 45 miles away. This is a state of the art veterinary clinic owned by Dr. John Newman. Dr. Newman is always available for an emergency. After preliminary exam, he said she was very lucky. She seemed to have only a dislocated elbow. An Xray proved this to be the case. The X-ray also showed air in the chest cavity. The impact with the car apparently forced air out of the lungs and into the area around the heart. Dr. Newman kept her overnight. In the morning, he set and wrapped the elbow and removed 300 mls of air from her chest cavity. This was Memorial Day, I might add. Connie brought Lottie home the same afternoon. Today, one week later, she has only a slight limp and some barbed wire scars to recall her experience. As Alex and Dr. Newman said, she's lucky.
The hero of the story is Asco. Alex trained dogs for the Russian Army for fifteen years. Irina handled the dogs in competition. They brought Asco with them because they said he is the best one they ever had. At three years of age, he is trained to do everything from attack and protection to finding lost people and dogs. On lost dogs he is trained to hold the dog until Alex arrives; if the dog is aggressive, Asco barks and circles until help arrives. I have never heard of a dog trained to do this before.
Alex and Irina came to this country in hopes of finding work training dogs in the manner that Asco was trained. Their training is not Schutzhund but is called IPO. We have seen them training puppies using only a tennis ball. Rarely do they use a collar or leash. The puppies' response is truly amazing. In three weeks Irina has a five-month-old Shepherd puppy heeling, sitting, staying and doing recalls. The puppy can also navigate the agility equipment, while never using a leash.
My hope now is that Alex and Irina will be able to find work training wonderful dogs like Asco. We have contacted various police departments and Schutzhund clubs in the area, but they all would rather do it their way. In most cases, they won't even talk to us. We have gathered together a group of people to meet here at our home three times a week to train with Alex and Irina. I would hate to see a valuable resource such as this training go to waste or back to Russia.