From a distance, the animal roaming the rocks at Fremont County’s Split Rock Rest Area looks like a wolf.
That’s what the people trying to save her are afraid a stranger will think, too.
She’s a young dog with a wild streak, longing to connect with people and dogs around her but not yet ready to trust them.
For three weeks, the surrounding locals have rallied around her, driving long distances to make sure she has food, water and company.
So far, she’s outsmarted every plan.
‘Wild Heart’
Furever Found in Fremont, a shelter, got a call from the fire department on Sept. 19 about a loose dog at the rest area about 18 miles east of Jeffrey City. Staff made the 90-minute drive and tried to rescue her shortly after, but the stray wasn’t so easy to get into a car, a kennel or on a leash.
When days turned into weeks of trips to the rest area, the staff organizing the effort realized they couldn’t keep calling her the Split Rock dog. Amanda Wood, the shelter manager at Furever Found in Fremont, gave her the name Diya.
“I can't even remember what language it was, but it meant wild heart,” Wood said. “I just kind of went, ‘Huh, that really fits her.’”
Mark Lewis, board president of Furever Found, hasn’t stopped coming back. Every night for the past three weeks he’s made the drive after work to check on Diya, make sure she’s fed and try to gain her trust enough to get her to come with him.
“She recognizes my truck,” Lewis said. “When I pull up she always comes up to the truck and then she follows me down and watches me put the food and water out. Then she lays down around me and will hang out an arm’s distance away.”
Lewis has now gained enough trust that Diya will eat from his hand. He’s tried to use those moments to secure her while she’s distracted, but said that while the approach might work on other dogs, it isn’t working on her.
“She’s smart,” Lewis said. “Even while she's eating out of your hand, she will watch that leash.”
Lewis has tried nearly everything. Because Diya loves other dogs, he and shelter volunteers brought puppies from the rescue and set up panels in a loop, hoping she’d wander in to play so they could close the gap behind her.
She takes off when she sees the panels, he said.
Since she won’t go near a kennel or a live trap, he’s tried feeding her tranquilizers hidden in hot dogs, starting with a low dose for safety since he doesn’t know her exact weight. That low dose, Lewis said, had no effect on her and now she won’t take them at all.
“She’ll still eat hot dogs, but if you put a pill in it, she can tell,” Lewis said. “She looks at it and she looks at me like I’m an idiot. She’s not going to fall for it.”
Lewis said none of the setbacks have slowed him down. If anything, the effort has become a family one, with his wife, two children and their dogs now riding along for the daily trip to the rest area to look after Diya.
“Mark has been Diya’s hero in this,” Wood said. “He has devoted so much of his time and money and effort into bringing her home safe.”
Community Effort
Lewis and the staff and volunteers at Furever Found aren’t the only ones looking out for Diya.
As her story has spread beyond the shelter, Wood estimated that more than 100 community members have seen her on social media and made the drive up to the rest area to check on her themselves.
A group of Diya supporters met in Riverton on Thursday to map out a strategy for catching her this weekend.
“We get calls every day asking about her,” Wood said. “We have so many people, amazing people, reaching out to help.”
All that community attention means Diya is far from starving. Between Lewis’ reliable feedings and a steady stream of locals dropping off food at the rest stop, the elusive stray has been eating a diet most dogs only dream of.
“Somebody from BLM called the shelter and said, ‘Hey, you don't want her to have chicken, right?’” Lewis said. "Somebody left a box of Chester chicken.”
Lewis said he’s not necessarily worried about Diya’s safety. She has so much food, he said, that she’s taken to burying it like she’s storing it away for winter.
With her heavy coat, he doesn’t think she gets cold at night. And he’s inspected the area for animal droppings to make sure there aren’t predators roaming.
What worries him most, he said, is people.
“Lots of things have been shot up there,” Lewis said. “Trash cans, signs. She looks kind of like a coyote.”
To get her to safety fast, staff have set up a live trap pinned open and are serving all her meals inside it so she gets comfortable entering. For that strategy to work, Lewis and the shelter staff now have a different request for people who have been so generous in helping care for Diya.
“We're just asking volunteers to get other people to stop feeding her,” Lewis said. “Every night I go up there, there's food all over the place. So like she doesn't really need to go into the trap to get food because there's food everywhere.”
Lewis hopes this weekend will finally end the weeks-long effort.
Until now, the trap has been kept pinned open. This weekend, they’re finally arming it to close, with a strict watch schedule so she isn’t left inside for long if caught.
Lewis will sleep at the rest stop Friday night, followed by a second volunteer on Saturday night and a third on Sunday.
Lewis is hopeful that the Sunday volunteer won’t be necessary and that by Saturday night Diya will finally be secured.
‘She Just Got Loose’
Lewis said his focus has been more on Diya and less on how she got to the rest area. In the past several weeks he’s spent with her, he said he’s sometimes wondered if she was stolen.
“I honestly feel like the reason she's hanging around there is because she's waiting for her owners,” Lewis said. “She looks at vehicles, she gets excited every time a vehicle pulls up. She doesn't want to be up there, but she doesn't want to get caught by some random random stranger.”
But when the rescue efforts began in September, Wood said that a family reached out to her claiming that Diya’s origin story began with her at a breeder.
“She was just kind of in a kennel,” Wood said. “Nobody was really paying attention to her. She’d really never ever been out of the kennel, and they wanted to give her a chance.”
The family, who Wood said lives between Cody and Thermopolis, drove to the Fremont County area to get Diya. On their way home, they stopped at the Split Rock Rest Area and took Diya out on her leash.
“She just got loose,” Wood said. “I think she slipped out of a collar they had on her and they just couldn’t get to her again.”
Wood said the family didn’t give up easily. They returned to the rest area several times to search for Diya, even in rainstorms and over rocky ground, but never managed to catch her.
“They were very caring people,” Wood said. “The minute that they saw the post, they reached out and said, ‘This is her backstory.’ And they’ve been checking in and following and everything too.”
Though the family originally meant to keep Diya, Wood said watching the extensive rescue effort has made them realize she likely needs more help than they can give her.
‘She’ll Never Be In A Cage Again’
While catching Diya has proven to be a challenge, Wood said finding her a place to go won’t be.
“We've already got her place set up,” Wood said. “She's already got her own her own anti-anxiety bed ready and everything. We just got to get her here.”
Before it was officially established as a nonprofit in August, Wood and her husband had been informally running Furever Found in Fremont from their home. They started in Riverton, then moved to a more rural property to make room for more dogs.
When Diya arrives, Wood said, she won’t be the first traumatized dog to come through their doors. Some arrive starving or afraid of every human hand, Wood said, but most have come around once they feel safe and learn from the other dogs that humans can be trusted.
“She doesn't have a mean bone in her body,” Wood said. “She just has to overcome her fear. I think once she sees the other dogs here and they all play together, I think she's going to have a blast.”
Wood said she approaches every dog individually, so she can’t say exactly what Diya’s care will look like. But one thing is certain about what awaits her at the rescue.
“She’ll never be in a cage again,” Wood said.
Lewis also sees a bright future for Diya. He believes that once she’s more comfortable around people, she’ll make a great family member.
His daughter has even joked that Diya might end up joining their family after all the time he’s spent with her and the bond they’ve built. But Lewis said he already has several dogs at home and wouldn’t be the best fit for the attention Diya will need.
“It’s tempting, but no,” Lewis said. “I think that’s the hardest part for me. I know in the end I’m going to catch her and then I’m going to have to let her go.”
Though she won't be staying with him, he knows the shelter's thorough vetting process will guarantee her a good home.
Until then, he’ll keep making the nightly drive to Split Rock to finally catch her and give her the future she deserves.
Emma Jane Jackson can be reached at emma@cowboystatedaily.com.
