Rusty the super “smart” Australian Shepherd who once helped save his owner’s life is back in a secure and loving home after he was lost along a highway in central Wyoming and separated from his owner.
But the road getting home was definitely not one less traveled.
Lander Pet Connection Director Hannah MacGregor said Rusty arrived on her radar in May after a friend drove through the Shoshoni area from a vacation trip and spotted the pooch on the side of the road looking “really scared.”
“He was like out in the middle of nowhere and a bunch of people had left bowls of food and water,” she said. “When they initially reached out to me about the dog being out there, I had already seen it on Facebook.
“Someone had posted, but they couldn’t get close to him, and they were just trying to find out where he belonged.”
MacGregor said her friend spent more than an hour talking and working with the dog to finally coax it into her car. She was finally able to do that after another family stopped to assist. The friend kept Rusty overnight and brought him to the shelter.
During their intake of the dog at the shelter, MacGregor said they always check for a microchip. They found one on Rusty. There were two phone numbers and an emergency number listed on the chip.
After trying the first two numbers and learning they had been disconnected, they tried the emergency number and located Rusty’s owner’s mother in Oklahoma.
It turns out that Rusty’s owner, a woman, had been incarcerated in Colorado after living in Cheyenne. One of the woman’s friends was supposed to be caring for the dog.
The friend disappeared. How Rusty ended up outside Shoshone remains a mystery. But MacGregor said, though the dog was covered in ticks, he didn’t appear physically that he had walked the 270 miles from Cheyenne.
Finding a plan for Rusty’s care meant waiting for his owner to be able to call. During the wait, staff neutered him at the request of his owner’s mother.
During conversations with the dog owner’s mother and a son, they determined they would be unable to drive up and get the dog.
Foster Care
Meanwhile, a family in Afton, Wyoming, volunteered to keep the dog short-term while a solution was worked out for a more permanent home.
“At that time, it sounded like the owner was going to get out of jail soon,” MacGregor said. But that did not pan out, and the owner’s incarceration was expected to continue until possibly January.
Rusty was bonding with the family, and the Afton family and MacGregor wanted to limit the stress on the dog and not pass him off to another home just to be passed off again.
“That’s when we got in contact with the owner’s other son,” MacGregor said. She said that he lives near his grandmother and told the shelter that his family would accept the dog.
Addison Miller said her husband, Allen and their son, Aiden, are actually going to be hosting Allen’s mom when she finishes her time in a treatment facility for her addiction issues that landed her prison.
So, they were happy to add Rusty to their family, which already includes three other family dogs — two older dogs and a puppy. Rusty and the puppy quickly became pals, she said.
Miller said she has experience in dog training, boarding and rescues. To get Rusty, the family drove to Rock Springs from their home in Sapulpa, Oklahoma.
“He is a purebred Australian Shepherd. Both his parents are papered,” she said. “He is the most beautiful brown boy ever and he is so sweet and so smart.”
Rusty made the 1,021-mile road trip to his new home without a problem.
Life Saver
Miller said her husband wanted it shared that Rusty saved his owner’s life a little more than a year ago. His mother had passed out on a bed from an overdose in a room with the door locked and Rusty “somehow knew, ‘Hey, I need to go check on my mom,” she said.
The 2-year-old attempted to chew through the door and when he couldn’t get through, went to her roommate’s door and jumped on it until the roommate opened it. The roommate asked the dog what was wrong, Miller said.
“And Rusty pulls her roommate down to her room and is barking and scratching at the door and the roommate is mad because my door is all messed up now,” she said. “But (the woman) is not answering so he busts through the door and there she is blue on the bed, and the roommate saved her.”
Miller said her husband’s mother is in recovery from her addiction issues and when she gets out will stay with them and continue her sobriety journey and be reunited with her “baby.” Miller said her husband’s mom calls every day and when Rusty hears her voice he becomes “all excited wagging his little nub tail.”
MacGregor said the fact that Rusty’s owner had him microchipped really helped the story to have a positive ending. Those good-news stories occur for them a few times a year.
“Microchips are such as amazing tool for animals that go missing,” she said. “We will scan them and lo and behold the dog fell out of the truck and they didn’t even realize.
“We will have situations where a cat will show up at the shelter as a ‘surrender’ and the (original) owner has been looking for it for the past two years and (the cat) has been living with a Riverton family. Because of that microchip we were able to get them back.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
