AMHERST — After more than three months wandering in the woods and neighborhoods of Amherst and significant efforts by several people to locate her, Hannah, a yellow Labrador retriever who escaped from her owners on the day they brought her home, is now back at the shelter from which she was adopted.
On Sunday night, Hannah was captured when she entered a specially-designed cage set up in a Beston Street yard, bringing a happy ending for the missing dog, who survived bitter cold and occasional snowstorms throughout the winter, and appeared to be none the worse for wear.
Her recovery brings an end to the search that began shortly after Nina and Jim Scott adopted her from the Franklin County Regional Dog Shelter and Adoption Center on Dec. 11.
“We are relieved this saga is over and that Hannah is safe and content,” Nina Scott said.
Just hours after they brought her to their South Mount Holyoke Drive home, Hannah escaped with her leash still attached while Jim Scott was walking her in the South Amherst neighborhood.
Much of the work to locate Hannah was coordinated by Debra Jones Bachrach, a dog officer from Petersham and a volunteer with the organization Missing Dogs Massachusetts. She was called in to help five days after a professional tracker was unable to find Hannah. For all but about four days since she was put on the case, Bachrach has traveled to Amherst to set up cameras and design methods for getting Hannah safely into an enclosure.
In the first weeks, Bachrach used a sort of crate with enclosures in which scraps of chicken and blankets were placed in hopes she would enter it overnight. One time Hannah did enter the mechanism, but she promptly escaped.
Bachrach said she continued to monitor Hannah’s whereabouts in South Amherst, noticing on cameras she set up that the dog was doing a figure 8 loop, with the Scotts’ home at the center, until around Martin Luther King Jr. weekend.
Then, for a few days, Hannah was not seen on the cameras, and Bachrach became concerned that she had left the area, perhaps being chased away by people who left food for her and approached her when she came for the food.
Bachrach said catching a frightened dog like Hannah takes time and patience. ”You can’t pursue these dogs, you can’t go around calling them,” Bachrach said.
Hannah’s next sighting was about two miles north in the North Whitney Street neighborhood, where she likely ventured using the railroad tracks.
For the past few weeks, though, Bachrach knew Hannah was entering a yard on Beston Street, a small street between downtown Amherst and the University of Massachusetts campus.
With the agreement of the homeowners, Bachrach set up cameras that livestreamed during the evening, giving her the information she needed to begin building an enclosure and putting bait inside it.
The homemade enclosure trap, 8-feet long and 9-feet wide, used chainlink fence and created a door that Hannah would be comfortable entering, with a feeding station with cooked steaks placed at one end. She then slowly built the trap.
Bachrach said that Hannah was so frightened and in a heightened mode, that if any dramatic changes were made to the enclosure, she likely would not go near it.
Bachrach added an electromagnetic switch to close the door, with a trip line attached to a basted bone. Once Hannah tugged hard enough on the bone, the door would close and seal her inside.
Hepburn praised Bachrach for her persistence.
“The Missing Dogs Massachusetts organization, and especially Deb Bacharach, traveled almost daily from Petersham, no matter the weather, to assist,” Hepburn said.
Other assistance was provided by Gabi Trudeau, office manager at the Franklin County Regional Dog Shelter and Adoption Center
For the Scotts, they are happy to know that Hannah survived and is back in a place where she can enjoy the company of other dogs, as well as human companions.
And they have moved on from their brief ownership of Hannah, recently getting Maggie, a 2-year-old black Labrador retriever who Nina Scott describes as “a beautiful, loving girl.”
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
