The Return of the Canine

In 1879, Laura Ingalls Wilder crossed a raging river with her Pa and their dog Jack got swept away. The family looked up and down the river for the dog, to no avail.

A few weeks later, while sitting at the evening campfire, Laura saw a pair of eyes in the darkness. Lo and behold, it was Jack, who had caught up to them after three weeks.

130 years later, our dog Ginn escaped her cage while being loaded onto an airplane at Ben Gurion airport on her way to Toronto with my wife. Two and a half weeks later she is finally returned to us.

When we last heard from her, Ginn had run off as she was being loaded into the airplane, having escape her cage which was locked and tied shut with plastic ties, and having been drugged too, to boot. Rachel had spent five hours searching the airport for her with Israel's top security agents, who were unable to find this small drugged lethargic dog on an essentially flat and unhindered surface after five hours, which gives one great hope regarding Israel's top security agents.

In the interim, we contacted the Jerusalem and Israeli versions of the ASPCA (Tzaar Baalei Haim); we originally got her from Jerusalem's branch. Ginn has an electronic ship in her which would allow any veterinarian to trace her back to us. We also contacted a few other society's who care for lost and mistreated dogs, and they in turn had contacted various other groups, including a reporter.

To be honest, I still wasn't expecting to hear from the dog again.

But yesterday, a dog-loving stewardess Ofer made contact with a dog in the El-Al restricted area of the airport. While it is not unusual to see cats roaming around the airport, there are no other dogs that roam about there. The dog ran off again.

She saw the dog again when she landed, and again didn't catch her. She was on her way home determined to return, catch her, and take her home to her three other dogs until she could find out whom this dog belonged to. Ofer contacted another stewardess, Tal, who somehow made the contact with one of the aforementioned groups, who told them my story.

They called me. Of course, we couldn't know for sure that it was Ginn, but we hoped.

I called Tal, Tal called Ofer, I called Ofer, and despite Ofer having had no rest from her previous flight, Ofer and I headed off to the airport. We searched around without any luck fr about 45 minutes. There are places which are closed not only to me but to Ofer as well. Luckily, a security agent indicated that he had seen the dog a half hour before going into one of these secure areas. We waited outside.

In the end, we waited for only fifteen minutes when the security guy called us. He had the dog in his sight. He sneaked us in to the area and within the next thirty seconds Ginn was bouncing on me like crazy; she was dirty, but alive and apparently well.

So, all's well, except that I now have the dog here and she is supposed to be there, in Toronto. I'm not entirely sure what we're going to do about that right now, but for the moment, I don't want to traumatize the dog any further.

Yehuda