‘Marathon’ 10-day search for dogs finally rewarded

by Edith Symes

Okete mum Chantal Widmer reckons she walked a “marathon” in her gumboots over the 10 days she spent scouring the valleys of surrounding farmland this month for her young family’s two lost dogs.

But while seemingly the whole neighbourhood also turned out to help search for the mother-and-daughter pair of terrier/ spaniel crossbreeds – and huge support poured in online from the Raglan community – Chantal believes it was getting in touch with a professional dog tracker that proved the game changer.

With the benefit of his regular long-distance advice there was a Bo Peep-like ending to the drama when, ironically on Friday the 13th, the much-loved pets quietly returned by themselves to their Hauroto Bay Rd home.

The pair – nine-year-old Pipi and her two year old daughter Lion – were covered in mud and ticks, skinny and exhausted, with one also suffering a badly infected eye.

“I cried, a lot … everybody was crying,” Chantal confesses.

While it was the best of outcomes, the saga itself became for Chantal one of “incredible connection” to the community.

Not only did an online plea for help in locating the dogs get huge support, with hundreds of comments and emojis posted, but her whole Okete neighbourhood also got in behind the search. “I met all my neighbours … they are the most beautiful people,” says the mother of three.

Despite widespread searching for several days, however, there were still no clues and no sightings. Chantal even enlisted the aid of clairvoyants who indicated the cliffs and quarry nearby as possible places the canines could be, suggesting too that the earthquake on the night of their disappearance could’ve played a part.

She herself thought that maybe Pipi was trapped somewhere and Lion was with her, crying. “We know that if they could come home they would,” she posted on Facebook, offering a $1000 reward for information leading to their recovery.

In desperation Chantal also got in touch with Nelson-based dog searcher Don Schwass. Once if not twice a day the two had a phone conversation, exchanging umpteen messages in-between.

“Don told us we had to find a way to search more successfully,” Chantal recounts. “The way we were doing it was like looking for a needle in a haystack … we were wearing ourselves out.”

Dogs commonly travel into the wind, he revealed, so in this particular case they had to look east and not west to the quarry or the Okete waterhole. He also recommended family members only search twice a day from six till nine each morning and evening. The dogs would be lying low, resting, during the day.

Chantal says Don believed the pair had wandered too far, become disoriented and reverted to their wild state. He was also concerned a posse of searchers could further drive them underground.

He advised leaving long scent trails and scent cones by walking and sitting for a time in particular valleys, according to the daily direction of the winds, in the hope the dogs might chance upon the familiar smells and find their way home.

“We did what he said,” Chantal recounts. “I walked a marathon in my gumboots … there were so many valleys!”

Often she had her children – Wai Ariki, Pounamu and Anatipa – in tow, plus Pipi’s and Lion’s canine sisters, Milly and Tiger. Her nine-year-old son Anatipa insisted on walking barefoot despite the prickles, convinced his bare skin would leave a better scent.

By day nine, Chantal admits, she was becoming disheartened. They’d searched by foot, horseback and 4WD buggy and had all the neighbouring farmers looking out.

In consultation with Don, who was also monitoring the weather patterns, she knew she had to search one last valley further south. On Friday January 13 “I walked as far as I could until the river forked and sat for an hour, willing the dogs to smell me”.

That afternoon her 12-year-old niece Grace Karsten, who lives on the adjoining property, noticed the dogs quietly curled up together just outside the shed, and alerted the entire family.

Chantal is convinced the dogs in the end simply “followed our scent and came back”.

*While not every story has a happy ending, Don has managed to find three quarters of the missing dogs he’s tracked over 20 years.