A dog missing since Saturday was safely returned to her owners Wednesday after traveling miles through deep snow to get home to Summit Park.
Anyone who has lost a pet knows the dreadful feeling of wondering what happened: Is the animal OK? Was it hit by a car? Did someone take it home? Gail Paquette ran through that gamut of emotions these past few days when her dog Kona took off from the Run-A-Muk dog park Saturday afternoon.
Paquette had surgery recently and her neighbor had kindly offered to take Kona out to the dog park with her dog. But when it was time to leave, Kona was gone.
“She loves that park," Paquette said. "She was romping with a couple of other dogs and had her smile happy face on, and she ran around with these two other Aussie type dogs into the upper part of the dog park. The other two dogs came back – and she didn’t. So, it could be that she saw a deer or a moose or something that attracted her attention away. And the snow is so high this year that it’s easy to get over the fence up there. She was gone.”
Paquette says they quickly put up posters and saturated social media and contacted KPCW to put word on the station’s Lost and Found report.
“We had people with drones looking for her. I had someone loan a bullhorn that I actually walked up one of the skate ski trails behind the outlet mall. I did that whole walk all the way up to Run-A-Muk. I did that with a bull horn. I don’t know if that got her to go that direction toward home rather than where she might have been going up to the Sun Peak Area which has similar pine trees and it feels similar to Summit Park – it might have turned her around,” said Paquette.
Before leaving for work on Wednesday, Paquette’s husband headed downstairs to take a hot tub.
“I heard this sound downstairs and it sounded like anguish and I thought, oh, he just needs a moment to himself before he goes off to work because we’ve just been so worried. And then suddenly up the stairs and into the kitchen comes Kona. I about passed out. I couldn’t believe it. I was just so, so happy.”
And though she’ll never know what happened, Paquette believes Kona - who is very familiar with the trails in the area - traveled about seven miles on her own to make it home.
“She is exhausted, and she is sore. She limps just a little bit. The pads of her feet kind of raw. So, she must have been post holing it up around the trial system. But the trails are not all well-trodden. We mountain bike, we hike, we skate ski - she’s used to trails with us. So, that’s really her comfort zone. I don’t think she traveled back through the roads. I think she found her way back potentially from following that bullhorn noise on that skate ski trail and then figuring out where the rest of the trails came over the mountain. I don’t know. But she is definitely worn out.”
Paquette got emotional talking about how helpful the Park City community is and is grateful to live in a place that will do just about anything for their animals.
“My poor neighbor was just devastated and looking for the dog and was a tremendous help in getting everything out there in social media. We did posters and put them everywhere. My goodness... the Park City community really rallied to find her. I was just overwhelmed. It was amazing.”
Kona – who had been banned from getting on the new furniture - could be seen on one of the new chairs later that day cuddling with Gail.
