On December 20, 2003, I arrived at the trail head at about 8:00pm. I securely snubbed my sled to a post, and proceeded to hook up my dogs. I put Powder, my two year old female and best lead dog out front, along with Oreo, my one year old male. My two year old male, Bandit and my Adopt A Husky, Inc. foster Takoda would be running wheel. I had just finished getting them hooked up, when a park ranger pulled into the parking area. He explained that he was new in this district, and wasn't sure if I was allowed to run my dogs after dark and what park permits I needed to run there. He called his supervisor on his cell phone for advice. While this was going on, my dogs were howling and banging their harnesses. They wanted to run NOW! After a few minutes, the ranger hung up the phone and told me it was OK for me to run my dogs. He told me to have fun, and drove away.

Just as I was walking to the sled, I saw my two lead dogs, Powder and Oreo, take off down the trail. I panicked! Two of my dogs had just disappeared into the darkness of the 2,700 acre park. I ran up to my two remaining dogs, and saw that Takoda had chewed through the rope gang line. I jumped on the sled, pulled the quick release, and yelled HIKE! It didn't take long to figure out that Bandit and Takoda, pulling me on the sled, were no match for my my two loose dogs, and chasing after loose Siberians usually doesn't work anyway. At about the one mile mark, I took a shortcut trail back to the trail head. At that time, the ranger reappeared, and started helping me search. The park ranger drove around the perimeter of the park searching with his spotlight. I hooked Bandit and Takota to their leashes and headed down the trail the wrong way. Since they were still hooked together with their neckline and tug lines, I was hoping they would stay running down the trail, and I would eventually run into them head on. I walked the entire four mile trail, but obviously at some point they had left the trail. I searched the area until 11:00 pm., when the batteries in my head lamp went dead. I went home exhausted and devastated.

The next morning, I got up before sunrise and printed 100 copies of "Lost Dog" posters. I headed to the park to put up and hand out the posters. My wife stayed home and started making phone calls and sending e-mailings to contact everyone that needed to be contacted. I went to all the local businesses and the homes surrounding the park with the posters. When I got to the trail head where I had lost the dogs, I ran into friends from the Siberian Husky Club of the Twin Cities (SHCTC) and Adopt A Husky, Inc. (AAHI) our local Siberian rescue group. They were dog sledding and skijoring and told me they would keep an eye out for them while out on the trail. They also took posters to put up. The park ranger from the night before was there and told me that some people staying at the nearby cabins at Baker Park Near Wilderness Settlement had heard dogs howling near their cabins the night before. Three park rangers, my daughter and I spent the rest of the day searching the surrounding wooded areas on snowshoe. We covered a lot of miles, but no one saw or heard my dogs. We searched until dark, and then went home to start again the next day.

The next morning, I was frazzled, losing hope, and didn't know what to do. I am the type of person who doesn't like to ask for help. I was surprised when I checked my e-mail, and discovered that a large group of people from AAHI and the SHCTC were putting their Christmas plans, jobs, families and their own Siberians on hold to travel many miles to Baker Park to search for Powder and Oreo. They had planned and organized this search without any help from me. I was also getting a lot of great suggestions for people to contact, and search tactics to try that I had not thought of.

My AAHI friend, Lisa Phernetton suggested I try contacting an animal communicator. I do not believe in ghosts, space aliens, fortune tellers or the like, and have always lumped animal communicators somewhere into that group. But at this point, I was willing to try anything, and called one of the animal communicators recommended to me. Marta Williams from northern California (www.martawilliams.com) is the person I called. I tried to sound positive as I spoke with her on the phone. Marta asked what roads surrounded the park, for a brief description of Powder and Oreo, and a little about how I lost them. She then told me she would work on it that evening, and to call her back at 7:30 am. She would then tell me what I needed to do to find Powder and Oreo and get them safely back home.

When I arrived at the park to start my search that day, I ran into people everywhere, searching for my lost dogs. I searched a wooded area near a park group camp next to Katrina Lake. When it was starting to get dark, I heard dogs howling within a few hundred yards of me. I ran through the woods it the direction of the howling, crossing a large frozen pond on the way. When I reached the wooded area where I thought the howling was coming from, it went silent and I didn't hear it again. I searched the area, but found nothing. I was frustrated, needed a flashlight, and had to leave to meet other searchers at the Holiday station in Maple Plain at 5:30pm. I met with other searchers to reorganize our search. We had people going out in cars to search around the residential areas near the park, and people going to search near the cabins. I took my neighbors and fellow Siberian owners, Chris and Ana Wall with me back to the area where I had heard dogs howling earlier. We searched the wooded area near Katrina Lake, the pond, and the creek that connected the two. At one point Chris and Ana thought they heard whining, but the wind was playing tricks on our ears and they weren't able to locate the source. At one point, I fell through the ice, with one leg completely under water, while standing right next to Chris and Ana. It was about 10:00 pm.when we decided to go home and return to search again the next morning.

On Tuesday, I called Marta Williams, the animal communicator at 7:30 am. as instructed. I tried halfheartedly to be enthusiastic as she told me what she had learned. Marta told me that she was getting strong feelings from Powder, but not from Oreo. She felt that Oreo may be hurt or depleted of energy. She said that when they first escaped, they were very excited and thought it would be a great adventure. (typical loose Siberians) They were thinking they would run in a large circle and return to the place where we started. (I hadn't told her that the trail was a four mile loop) At some point while they were running south, they got mixed up and left the trail. They had been running though the trees and hills for two days, getting their harnesses tangled in trees and undergrowth, but always getting themselves loose again. They were near the cabins at one time, since they sensed people were in that area. They did get back to the area of the trailhead on two occasions, but I was not there, so they continued looking for me. Marta then told me that she sensed that they were now caught by their harnesses or neck line, and could not get free. Powder was indicating that she couldn't move from where she was at now, because of something to do with Oreo being injured or stuck on something. Next Marta told me what we had to do to get them back. She told us to start at the area near the cabins. From there we needed to go down a hill to a creek. Cross over the creek, and go up a steep wooded area beyond the creek. We were to look for the tallest hill in this area, with taller trees than the surrounding hills. Powder and Oreo were caught in the thick undergrowth on top of that hill. Marta told us to bring one of our dogs with (Bandit) to help. She told us to talk to Bandit ,explaining exactly what we wanted him to do; use his keen sense of smell and hearing to lead us to Oreo and Powder. She also told us that someone else would be at the park to assist us, and that we should relay the information to this person, as he would be helpful in finding them. Marta told us that she had communicated to Powder that she should bark, howl, or make some sort of noise if she heard anyone near her. Since I had covered most of the park by now, I knew that there were indeed a series of creeks near the cabins. You had to go down a hill to the south to the creek, and beyond the creek were a series of steep wooded hills, just as Marta had described. One of the areas that fit her description was the area where we had searched the night before.

As I was getting my warm clothes on, Chris called and spoke to my wife. He was not going to work; instead, he was going to take his female Siberian, Avalanche to the park to search for Oreo and Powder. My wife passed on the information that Marta had given us. My wife and I started at the area near the cabins, and proceeded south towards the creek. Chris went to the area to the south, where we had been the night before and headed north. If we didn't find anything, we would end up meeting somewhere in the middle near the creek. Chris had Avalanche hooked to a line attached to a skijoring belt he was wearing. He headed into the woods to the top of the tallest hill in the area, above where the creek is at. He thought he heard whining. Avalanche was pulling him in the direction that the whining appeared to be coming from. Then they heard it again. At that point, Chris said Avalanche literally dragged him over to a thick area of downed trees and undergrowth. Avalanche started digging under one of the downed trees, and as Chris crouched down to see what she was digging after, he saw Oreos front paws under the tree. Chris found Powder and Oreo in the brush, still in harness, tangled up by their neckline, harnesses and tug line ropes. Although he had a hard time getting them untangled and hooked to his skijoring belt, Oreo and Powder packed out with Avalanche and Chris like nothing had happened out of the ordinary.

After a trip to the vet, we found that Oreo had some raw areas on the back of his hind legs, from the tug lines rubbing on them. He had a slight fever and was given antibiotics and painkillers, and is now recovering nicely. Powder was unscathed and wants to go for a sled run RIGHT NOW!

I owe a HUGE thank you to the hundreds of people who helped get Powder and Oreo safely back to me. I didn't realize how many friends we had in the Siberian Husky community until this happened. I also need to thank Marta Williams for sharing her special gift with us. Did I mention that I now believe in animal communicators? (I'm still working on ghosts and space aliens) As an ending note, I wanted to mention that Avalanche and Chris refused to accept the reward money I was offering for the safe return of Powder and Oreo. I owe them big time!

(18th July, 2004)