Brave new world for finding pets, same cold one for losing them

Lori Rundle pitched every angle she could to get me to write about Shia and her people.

Shia is a chihuahua who has been lost since July 6, and her family hasn’t given up on her.

I balked, but Rundle was persistent, insistent.

“She was a Fourth of July dog,” Rundle said.

Shia panicked over fireworks in unincorporated Pierce County, just like dozens of other dogs. Her family had kept her inside during the noisiest nights, but she was in her yard on July 6.

It should have been an ordinary, quiet morning on 122nd Street East and Golden Given, but someone had to blow stuff up.

Shia scrabbled under a fence weakened by construction next door.

Local social media were full of accounts of dogs lost and found over and after the Fourth’s blast-fest. A good number of them were seen dashing toward golf courses, which made me wonder what the life of a groundskeeper was like that week.

Shia’s story illustrates what a few people shooting off explosives after the holiday did to an innocent creature, Rundle argued to no avail.

She tried me again.

The family is remarkable, she wrote in an email. They’ve done posters. They stand on street corners with signs on the weekends. They check animal shelters and their website every day, most days more than once.

Travis Pooser, 32, calls himself Shia’s dad. He and his wife, Ginny, have had her nearly five years and consider her a part of the family. Ginny was a month away from delivering their daughter, Quinn, when Shia bolted.

They started with standard black-and-white posters, then upgraded to neon yellow. They wrote a lost chihuahua message on Ginny’s car, along with their contact number: 253-228-1913.

When the posters didn’t work, the Poosers organized what they call “intersection alerts.” They, family and friends stand at intersections in Midland and Parkland near their home with posters and flyers.

“It’s hard to depend on someone stopping and reading a sign and writing my number down,” Travis explained. “We have signs that say, ‘Honk for a flyer.’ We got some sightings.

They also got a few calls from jerks who said the dog’s dead, and they’re fools for looking.

Rundle tried the cutting-edge angle. The Poosers are working social media. When Shia didn’t turn up at the Humane Society, or on Craigslist or Facebook posts, Travis built a Shia’s World page for her: helpfindshia.webs.com.

He wrote it as if he were his dog.

“I am a tan and white, smooth coat Chihuahua,” it reads. “I don’t have big ears like my brother Jax does, I have to be quiet ... he can probably hear me typing right now. ... The main thing is, I miss my mom and dad. And I know that they are missing me too! It’s been SO LONG since I got to sleep in my bed, chase the cat (I hate him), and play with my brother. If ANYONE can get me back to my humans I sure would appreciate it. I might even lick you. But we’ll have to see.”

Shia’s wary of strangers, Pooser said.

“It was my way of getting a virtual bulletin out there,” he said. “I started a blog on Day 5, with leads, good and bad.”

He built a “Help find Shia” site on Facebook. So far, it has led to three other chihuahuas getting home.

But the sad fact is that a lost pet, even one with tech-savvy owners, is not news.

It is dream fragments, spots of sadness and questions that may never be answered.

It is the stuff of books and movies: “Lassie Come Home,” “The Incredible Journey,” “Milo and Otis.”

But it is not news.

If there is a telephone pole anywhere that has not had a lost pet notice tacked to it, that would be news.

If there is a driver who has not stopped for, or at least worried about, a pet at large and looking lost, that would be news.

That is how Rundle persuaded me.

It is a near-universal experience, and a chance to remind us of the good news a watchful stranger can give a pet, and a family.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677 kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/street