Luna, an 18-pound Jack Russell, has been loose in Yellowstone National Park since Sept. 10, and the people trying to bring her home are running out of time.
Katie Boucher, president of Norris Arc Training and Recovery Center in Norris, Montana, told Cowboy State Daily that if they can’t trap Luna within the next week, they will have to suspend the effort for the winter.
"There's no safe access after that point,” Boucher said. “We are at some really hard deadlines. We're asking that everybody respect that and let us do our work. We feel really good that we're going to be able to recover her.”
With Luna’s most recent sighting Friday, Boucher is confident the dog is still alive. Luna has been seen several times in the past 32 days, Boucher said, and she has often been met by well-meaning people who call her name or try to lure her with food but end up scaring her deeper into the woods.
The most helpful thing to do, Boucher said, is to snap a picture of Luna and report the sighting immediately to the National Park Service, or to contact Boucher directly by phone or text.
“This is a very serious situation,” Boucher said. “Having a loose, small dog in the campground and one of the most populated tourist parts of the park in bear country is very dangerous.”
‘Street Skills’
Luna’s owners declined to speak to Cowboy State Daily, but Boucher has been in regular contact with them since Norris Arc got involved in the rescue a week after the dog went missing.
Boucher said the California family was vacationing in the Canyon Village area of the park when they took an outing to the Norris Geyser Basin. Because dogs are not allowed there, they left Luna in their rented cabin with a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door.
“While they were gone, housekeeping made a mistake and opened up the cabin to go do their jobs,” Boucher said. “Luna escaped the cabin, and then the staff proceeded to chase her around the area for about two hours before the family got back and found out that their dog had been let out.”
For the next week, the family stayed in the park the entire time searching for her before someone eventually told them there was no way she could have survived so long and that they needed to leave.
Boucher isn’t sure who delivered that message, but she knows from firsthand experience that it isn’t true.
“The family should have never been told that she could not survive,” Boucher said. “They survive. They're not in great shape when we get them back, but they do survive.”
That proved to be the case with Luna. Boucher said she was spotted once on Sept. 13 but didn’t surface again until Sept. 20, two days after her family made the difficult decision to return home.
Since the Sept. 20 sighting, Boucher said Luna has been spotted every day, even inside lodges and restaurants in the area.
"She has street skills,” Boucher said. “She knows how to survive.”
Those skills, Boucher said, come from the first year of Luna’s life when she lived as a feral street dog before a rescue picked her up and her family adopted her. Though Luna is now 10 years old, Boucher said she’s been able to tap back into her survival skills with ease.
“Her behavior pattern is telling us that she has just reverted right back to that that life, and she's like, ‘I can do this,’” Boucher said.
Those skills are making it harder to catch Luna, Boucher said, because she is in a survival, feral state and isn’t going to people for help. But they also might keep her alive through the winter if the attempts to trap her are not successful in the next week.
“She's made really good decisions,” Boucher said. “I will not be surprised if she is still there in the spring, and we have to continue and pick this up in the spring.”
Woodland Friends
Boucher said Luna should have plenty to eat in the forest because she can scavenge the droppings of other animals. Her small size works in her favor, too, because she is fast enough to outrun predators and small enough to slip into hiding spots they can’t reach.
Boucher’s biggest fear is that Luna, a dog used to California’s warm climate, will freeze as temperatures drop, though she said the dog won’t have trouble finding a place to shelter.
“If she's able to make friends with some of the woodland creatures, like some of the squirrels or even some of the foxes, and ends up with them, she can survive out there indefinitely like that,” Boucher said. “Which is very possible. They will do this in order to survive.”
Boucher has seen it happen.
Last year, she led the rescue of a dog named Beau that was loose on the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest and even deeper in the wilderness than Luna is now. Because of other wildlife in the area, the team couldn’t use food in a trap, a challenge they are also facing with Luna.
Instead, they lured Beau with a scent station built around his blanket and his owner’s scent. On the fourth night, the owner drove up the mountain, and Beau ran out of the trees and hopped into the truck.
“It was brilliant,” Boucher said. “And that's what I'm hoping happens this week with Luna.”
Boucher said she has pinpointed where Luna is bedding down and plans to try catching her this week with a Missy trap, a humane, remotely triggered trap that stays open until someone watching closes it once the dog walks inside.
As the clock runs down, Boucher can only hope the trap works, so Luna doesn’t have to face a Yellowstone winter alone in the forest.
‘Circled Their Wagons’
Boucher said the public has been incredibly generous, donating funds and spreading the word about Luna on social media, and the National Park Service has been a great partner in the effort.
Xanterra, the company that operates the lodging where the family was staying when Luna got out, has been a different story, Boucher said.
“We have felt like they have circled their wagons,” Boucher said. “They have been non-communicative.”
Xanterra did not respond to Cowboy State Daily by publication.
Boucher emphasized that Luna’s escape came down to one simple misstep by housekeeping.
"Mistakes happen,” Boucher said. “We’re all human. The company, in my opinion, could have responded much better and in a much more helpful manner to be able to help recover and repair this mistake that happened.”
When the family asked her to help rescue Luna, Boucher said Xanterra gave her a 50% discount on three nights in a hotel room. Beyond that, she said, the company “refused” to provide lodging for the search or help her find last-minute lodging in the busy park.
“That's when Delaware North stepped in and helped us, so that we could continue our efforts,” Boucher said. “Had they not, we would have had to pull our trap already, and we would have already ceased operations because there was no safe place for me to stay.”
Delaware North is another concessionaire in Yellowstone, running many of the park’s stores, gift shops and some campgrounds and RV sites. Boucher said the company has since given her an RV spot and meals.
‘On Pins and Needles’
Even some individual Delaware North employees have gone out of their way for Luna. Marie Jaskula, manager of the Fishing Bridge General Store, saw the story on social media and, with experience in dog rescue and a boarding business she once ran in Wisconsin, wanted to do what she could to help.
“It’s really heartbreaking,” Jaskula told Cowboy State Daily. “When I saw it, my stomach dropped and I instantly went back to us losing our dog.”
Jaskula said she has been in this spot before, when a visitor’s dog ran off from her Wisconsin boarding business and stayed on the loose for four days.
“I've never experienced such an awful feeling as knowing that dog was out on the run,” Jaskula said.
That dog was eventually rescued, and Jaskula is hoping for the same outcome with Luna.
That’s why she teamed up with Boucher and began printing and handing out flyers around the area, both to remind people that Luna is still out there and to teach nearby businesses and tourists what to do, and what not to do, if they spot her.
“With the timeline being over 30 days, the assumption is that she never would make it,” Jaskula said. “But she's still out there and people are seeing her frequently. She has showed up on security cameras. She has figured out automatic doors into buildings and let herself in and out.”
Jaskula was also glad to hand over her employee meal allowance so Boucher could eat while she works.
“I want her to have somewhere to safely park at night, somewhere to get a meal, and help find Luna,” Jaskula said.
Now that Boucher has pinpointed an area where she believes Luna is sleeping in the forest, Jaskula said she and other volunteers have taken a step back to avoid startling the dog and to give Boucher the space to do the work she’s trained for.
“Katie is definitely the champion in all of this,” Jaskula said.
For Jaskula, and for the 30 or so people who have joined the search over the past month, the wait for good news has become the hardest part.
“I know every every time I get a text from Katie, I hope that it's her telling me that they've got Luna,” Jaskula said. “We'll really be all sitting on pins and needles this next week waiting.”
Emma Jane Jackson can be reached at emma@cowboystatedaily.com.
