Raven Needs Medication!

I did not think to mention this earlier, because it is so well integrated into our regular routine with Raven, but she needs daily medication for a chronic medical condition. It's not a problem so long as she gets her regular medication but without it, over time the problem will show up again and will get serious. And now it's been two days since she last had her medication, so that sucks, and lends to the urgency of finding her quickly.

The medical problem is expensive and time-consuming to deal with (the medication costs a bit of money plus regular vet care plus pills down her throat at each meal) but we love her so we deal with it. I'm going to edit the initial post so as to make sure this important information is covered there.

Otherwise, no new word. We've checked the four area animal shelters in person with no result. My brother, who is a smart waste water engineer, suggested that lost dogs might want to go into local creeks, and that we contact the Santa Clara Valley Water Authority so as to make their field crews aware of Raven's loss. So I did that this afternoon.

BAPR update and Vet note: (poison not likely)

Some updates:

1) Randi Plotner of Bay Area Poodle Rescue has rallied her network to help. She reports:

Several of us put posts on Facebook. I emailed Loree Levy who does poodle rescue in San Jose and spoke to Sara Rogers of Southbay Purebred in San Jose. She lives close to the intersections of Brentwood and Borina (in San Jose). Also email Nancy Lyon of Ohlone Rescue in the Fremont area.

Our volunteer in Los Gatos Veronica Presedo-Floyd is calling all the area vets and shelters. I called AVID to make sure Raven's chip was registered -- they had your information -- and gave them my home phone number. I contacted the President of Mission Trail Poodle Club and a woman who organizes poodle meet-ups in the San Ramon Valley area. I posted a notice on a dog-related message board and included a link to the blog.

Randi's email address is PudlRsq@aol.com. Bay Area Poodle Rescue's hotline number
is 510.286.7630.

2) We spoke with Raven's vet who suggested the following:

She confirmed that if Raven was seen running 2 hours after she left the area with the poison (she came out of the pool around 12:30, and went through the fence, then was spotted at 3pm), odds are very VERY good that she did not ingest any. Had she ingested a little, she would have been weakened by then, especially after spending the time in the pool. (She) also indicated that in this kind of situation, no news usually means good news. In this area, with so many people and so little space, people are very quick to notice a dead dog. Live dogs can hide and move. She will also pass the blog info on to her contacts, including other local vets.

Friday Morning Oct 2nd

No new news as of 10:10am this am pacific. I just got a call from a woman who said that someone had taken our poster off her tree and that she hoped that this meant Raven was found but that she did not have information about the dog. I can't blame people for not wanting to see posters like this, but I hope that affected people will allow them to remain up long enough for them to serve their purpose.

Via email last night, we asked friends to tweet/link to this blog last night and to ask their friends to re-tweet and repost so that friends' friends could become aware of Raven's loss. This morning various return emails and phonecalls have been rolling in - some messages of support and some with helpful tips on what else we can do. One good suggestion was to call all the area vets to see if they might have Raven. So I will do that today. Thanks to all - many eyes and minds will function better than just our own to solve this problem.

I have work I cannot put off doing this am, but expect to be out canvasing later today. We will also (via our friend Elaine) be visiting all the area shelters today for inperson inspections. More data as we have it.

Mark

Raven is Missing!

Thank you for taking the time to read about our dog Raven who went missing in San Jose, CA on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 about 2pm in the afternoon near the intersection of Williams and Moorpark (near the border of Cupertino and close to Archbishop Mitty Highschool). It means a tremendous lot to us. With your help, we can hopefully recover her.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Mark Vigil Dombeck: (510) 325-6979 mark@dombeck.com

Monica Vigil Dombeck (510) 387-1367

Elaine (our friend who lives in San Jose): (408) 316-1125

If you have seen Raven, please call us!! Even if you are not able to hold on to her until you can summon us, or the Animal Control people, it will help us very much to know that she was seen in a particular place at a particular time. This will focus our search efforts.

ABOUT RAVEN

Raven is a 6 year old Female Standard Poodle, Black in color (mostly pepper with just a little salt starting to creep in), and weighing approximately 45 pounds. The photo above was taken just a couple days ago and should be more or less exactly how she looks now (minus the wear of being lost).

Her hair is not cut in the conventional poodle fashion. Instead, we generally just shave her a uniform length save for her topnot. At present, her hair is quite long and she looks like a muppet. We were going to take her to get her hair cut in just a few days....

She is (or was) wearing a pink leather color which has tiny deeper pink pokadots on it. Suspended from the color are several metal tags, including:

1) an Alameda, CA Dog License (her license number is A001098)

2) several stamped metal tags with our cell phone numbers on them. I believe one of them says "I'm staying with Monica 510-387-1367 ". The other cell number would be mine (Mark) and that is 510-325-6979

Raven is also microchiped via the AVID company. AVID is aware that she is missing, and I have confirmed that our contact information with them is up-to-date.

Raven needs daily medication for a chronic medical condition! She's fine so long as she gets her daily medicine but without it, over time she will develop problems again which could become serious. That she has not had her medication for a couple days now lends urgency to the need for us to find her quickly.

Raven is a very friendly dog, but she is also somewhat of an anxious dog. When you first meet her, it is frequent that she will hold her distance and bark at you for a bit. Generally, offering her some cookies or similar tasty food (meat works well) will help break the ice.

Raven is not familiar with San Jose! We live in Alameda, CA far to the North. She frequently has visited San Jose to spend time with our friend Elaine and her dogs, but not to the point where she would be familiar with the Greater San Jose area.

WHAT HAPPENED (as we have pieced it together)

Our friend Elaine (a highly experienced dog owner) was dog-sitting Raven for a few days. In the early afternoon on Wednesday, 2009-09-30, our friend's two German Shepard Dogs (GSDs) and Raven managed to break through our friend's home's backyard fence (located within a block and a half of the intersection of Williams and Moorpark) and get into a neighboring yard. Something like the following happened:

• The two GSDs found and ate some snail bait or similar poison and shortly thereafter had seizures, died and were found on the sidewalk. It is not clear if Raven ate any of the poision.
  
  
• At around 2pm Raven managed to get herself into a neighbor's pool and could not get out. Barking furiously, she attracted the attention of some kindly PG&E employees who were nearby. They managed to fish her out of the water, but thereafter she bolted away from them.
  
  
• A neighbor (located near the intersection of Moorpark and Hazel Dell Way) reported to us that she saw Raven moving along Junipero Serra Lane (parallel and just north of Moorpark; just south of 280) heading East. She is sure this was about 3pm.

This all we know, and the last we have word of her. Please contact us if you can help locate Raven, in any state, so that we can be reunited with her.

HOW WE'VE REACTED

This is a very emotional loss and we are very frightened for the safety of our Raven. She is very much a full member of our family and her loss is horrible to contemplate. Dog owners will understand this.

OUR RECOVERY STRATEGY

We (Monica and I) have done the following to get the word out:

Starting Wednesday night, we started putting posters up with a photo of Raven, and our contact numbers. We did a lot more of this today (Thursday). Generally, we have focused on the area bounded by: 280 on the North, Lawrence Expressway to the West, Saratoga to the East (although I placed some posters further East of Saratoga this afternoon).

The posters say, and we will offer to anyone who is interested, that we are offering a reward of $500 USD for Raven's safe return, or information leading us directly to Raven's safe return.

I have been walking the neighborhoods in this area, calling her name and handing out more posters. No luck so far, but many people are sympathetic and have said they will help if they see her.

We have been to the San Jose Animal Care Center to register Raven as missing, and to do a physical tour of the present inmates there. Raven is not there as of this afternoon.

We called two other animal shelters in the area (the Silicon Valley Animal Control Authority in Santa Clara, and the Humane Society of Silicon Valley in Milpitas). Staff there who answered the phone said they were not aware of any dog being present there meeting Raven's description. Everyone we talk to (including shelter staffers) tell us that we need to do a physical inspection of all the shelters at least every other day. We are going to do that tomorrow (Friday), and on a going forward basis....

We have created this blog to serve as an information clearinghouse regarding Raven's loss.

WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP

If you live in the San Jose, CA area, please keep a careful eye out for Raven. She might be in your backyard or your neighbor's backyard or wandering the streets (dangerous!) near your house. Please tell your neighbors that Raven is Missing!

We hope that you will contribute any information you have about Raven's whereabouts here in the form of comments, and also any suggestions for further steps we might take to increase the odds of a safe reunion.

Post a link to this blog in your FACEBOOK, or tweet (or re-tweet) about it on TWITTER, so as to help get out the word. The more people in the Greater San Jose area who know to look out for Raven, the better her chances are (we hope).


Sincerely,

Mark

510-325-6979

mark@dombeck.com