West Lebanon
After calling for his wife to turn off the machine, Scott McKinney heard a Lebanon police dispatcher say the words he and his family had craved for more than two weeks.
“She said, ‘We found him,’ and I asked if she was joking, and then I heard the vacuum hit the floor,” Scott McKinney said. Sara McKinney was out the door and racing for the car before the call ended. Duke, a blind 13-year-old puggle, was still alive.
With the McKinneys’ 19-year old son, Hunter, driving because his mother was so excited, the pair sped to a nearby sand and gravel pit. It lies at the bottom of a long, steep embankment below dead-end Johnson Avenue. Duke, a pug and beagle mix, had been spotted by an employee of a nearby business, hunkered down in the midst of an open field on the pit floor.
Lebanon’s low temperature two days earlier had been zero degrees, and the neighborhood can see coyotes. Duke’s owners hadn’t fully given up, but his kennel had been dismantled and his food bowl put away. Now, Sara McKinney wept and cried out as her emaciated dog was lifted out of police officer Nick Alden’s cruiser and placed in her arms.
“When he realized it was me, he put his head on my shoulder,” Sara McKinney said. “His ribs were showing.”
Said Alden: “He was in rough shape, but he’s a tough little guy, and he wasn’t going to give up.”
Duke was a plump 45 pounds when he wandered away on Nov. 10. He weighed 29 pounds when found and had apparently been sprayed in the face by a skunk, whose smell remained on the dog’s fur. Taken to the Stoney Brook Veterinary Hospital, he was given antibiotics for an epic head cold and drops to soothe his sightless eyes.
Once home, Duke downed some warm water and chicken broth and slept until the next morning, when at 5 a.m., he made his usual request to go outside.
“He acted perfectly fine,” Sara McKinney said. “But he was weak and he wobbled a bit.”
The biggest mystery is how an aging, blind dog with a thin coat survived for so long. However, the McKinneys also are stumped by how Duke got out of their house. The locked door to their front porch was wide open when they returned home on the evening of Nov. 10, prompting fears that an intruder had broken inside.
Once that worry dissipated, the couple stared in confusion. The front door isn’t used because a decorative, iron shot-glass holder on an adjacent wall won’t permit it to open more than a foot, even with a violent tug on the handle. However, the holder was still on the wall.
The only explanation the McKinneys can conjure is that their other dog, Ty, a 1-year old Irish setter, stood to look outside and flipped the doorknob’s locking switch before the door blew open in the afternoon’s gusting winds.
A call to Lebanon Police brought Alden to Johnson Avenue, where he helped the McKinneys and neighbors search the adjacent yards and nearby Civic Memorial Park. The owners were out until 4 a.m., then up again several hours later, and Scott McKinney got Duke’s photo and details posted on the Missing Pets of the Upper Valley’s Facebook page and that of the Upper Valley region as a whole.
Messages of condolence and support flooded in. The Missing Pets post was shared 616 times and its creator and administrator, Hartford resident Heather Potter, said that led to more than 18,000 page views. One such viewer was White River Junction’s Beth Demers, who commented with hopes for Duke’s return and support for his family.
“Pets are family, so when you see a post about a missing dog, especially one that’s old and really vulnerable, it just tugs at the heartstrings,” said Demers, whose family owns a dog, two cats and a Chinese dwarf hamster. “If you keep hoping for a positive outcome, maybe it helps a little bit.”
The next two weeks were nonstop stress for the McKinneys, whose extended family got involved in the hunt and in plastering posters across the area. There were daily checks at shelters, calls to the police and pleas to area veterinarians to spread the word.
Strangers volunteered to help search, including area nurse Karen Richardson, of White River Junction, who owns a cat but no dogs. Because of Duke’s condition and age, she found herself becoming emotionally attached to his story.
“Time went by and it got colder and it really affected me,” Richardson said. “Duke brought out a feeling of helplessness in us and it became bigger than just him. When he was found, it was such a profound relief.”
When not walking or driving in search of Duke, Sara McKinney moved from window to window, staring outside in hopes of spotting him. She couldn’t stop thinking that her dog was in the gravel pit and said she walked across the field where he was found nearly a dozen times.
Scott McKinney kept thinking he heard the dog’s distinctive, yodeling bark on nights when he was working outside in the garage. But as time passed, he tempered his optimism.
“I was coming to grips with the fact he wasn’t coming back or going to be found alive,” Scott McKinney said. “He’s pretty smart, but there were just so many things that could have happened.”
Which made that phone call so shocking and sweet. Alden credited his department’s dispatchers, whom he said are noted animal lovers, for spreading the word among patrol officers and following up with an email that included Duke’s particulars.
“In other (police) departments, they might just note that the animal’s missing and it won’t go out to the officers,” Alden said. “But we have a soft spot for dogs.”
The McKinneys have ordered a GPS tracker for Duke, but the puggle seems inclined to stick close to home. Let into the fenced backyard to relieve himself, he takes only a few steps from the door before heading back inside.
“He doesn’t wander away from me and I have to consistently talk to him so he knows someone’s there,” Sara McKinney said. “He’s happy to be home, for sure.”
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or 603-727-3227.