Chewie, a docile 7-year-old dachshund, may soon be back with his owner in Portland, Oregon, following a serendipitous multi-state odyssey involving a car crash, a diligent FedEx driver, and a dogged couple from Mountain View.
It was around 11 a.m. on Monday when Scott and Kodi Allred, both 49, were driving to visit their son, who attends the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colo., when a black wiener dog caught their eye wandering along the side of I-80 near Elk Mountain.
Fearful that the dachshund would be hit by oncoming traffic, Scott pulled his truck to the side of the road and got out of the vehicle to pick up the frightened dog.
“The little guy was terrified, and I couldn’t get close to him,” he recalled. “I tried to call him to me, but he ran off, and I began chasing after him. I tried to cut him off so that he wouldn’t run into the road.”
Kodi also tried to run the dachshund down, but she was wearing boots that day and didn’t get very far. However, she kept her eyes on the dog and drove to the location.
It was then that Scott corralled the frightened pooch. “His little legs gave out, but man, he was fast,” said Scott, who applied a collar and leash and checked for a dog tag.
Indiana To Wyoming
When the Allreds couldn’t find a tag, they decided to drive to the closest humane society office in Laramie, which was about an hour away.
It was there that workers found a microchip embedded beneath the skin of the dog’s neck, enabling them to determine he was named Chewie and belonged to 33-year-old Amanda Lohr of Kokomo, Ind.
When the Humane Society contacted Lohr, she recounted the tragic story of how Chewie ended up on the interstate.
Lohr, who recently lost her job, told Cowboy State Daily in a phone interview that she and her boyfriend were traveling on I-80 from Kokomo in a 2005 Buick Century to a friend’s home in Portland, Ore. On October 24, at around 6:30 p.m., the Buick was struck by a semi-truck as it attempted to pass, causing it to roll three times and end up in a ditch.
Lohr was injured and was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Rawlins, while her boyfriend sustained a neck fracture and was airlifted to a hospital in Casper, where he remained for eight days.
Chewie was tossed from the vehicle and was presumed to have been killed by a passing car, while her cat was injured and had to be euthanized.
Lohr said she was stunned when Humane Society workers told her Chewie had managed to survive a week in the wilderness and was alive. “I was really happy because I had been mourning for more than a week,” she said, adding that her daughters shed tears of joy after learning that Chewie was alive.
FedEx Dog Delivery
Lohr is grateful for the Allreds’ diligence in rescuing Chewie.
“They have been super generous and have been sending me photos,” she said.
However, this happy ending has another hero.
Kenny Coomes, a long-haul trucker for FedEx who makes several trips a week between Salt Lake City and Scottsbluff, Nebraska, also spotted Chewie on I-80 before the Allreds sighted him. Coomes tried to catch Chewie and also placed a live trap with food and a blanket in it along the interstate. He assumed that Chewie had died and was possibly eaten by wildlife.
Coomes was surprised when a friend tagged him in a Facebook post from Kodi detailing Chewie’s rescue. He has arranged for a fellow FedEx employee to deliver the dog to Lohr in Portland, possibly within the next few days. “It’s amazing,” he said in a phone interview from the road. “It was God who put everything in place so this could happen.
Scott Schwebke can be reached at scott@cowboystatedaily.com.
