If the pet detective who drove in from Nebraska is correct, Crissy Murphy’s dog is living his second-best life, being fed and cuddled and cared for in someone else’s house.
The other option is that he’s still wandering the mean streets, but that seems unlikely. The streets would be in or near Bloomfield Hills, and “if he was outside,” said Murphy, 56, “he’d have been spotted by now.”
Harvey, a white, black and tan terrier mix, would have been sniffed out by the three tracking dogs the private investigator brought in. Or discovered by the two drones the Murphys hired to scour the area, twice. Or identified through the hundreds of laminated posters and placards and professionally printed flyers that have been taped up, hammered in or passed around by family and friends.
When a dog’s toys are scattered throughout a nice house in a tony suburb, he gets the best search party money can buy. And he’ll get a nice welcome-home party, too, when he finally shows up — a thank-you for the dozens of people who have rallied to his cause.
So OK, Murphy and her family aren’t everyman. But here’s the important thing:
Harvey is every dog.
The detective and the drones are novel, and inherently attention-getting. The placards look sharp, and above her phone number, 248-839-1958, the newest batches have an important addition: “$2,000 Reward.”
Harvey, though?
He’s scruffy, even after a bath. Friendly. Laugh-inducing. Small, at 20 pounds, but as Murphy puts it, “not afraid-to-step-on-him small.”
Come May 15, he’ll turn 11, and maybe that’s why he hurt his left rear leg a little while ago jumping off the porch. Then again, he happily jumped.
He loves to play. Loves Mr. Moose, his favorite stuffed animal; he’ll find it every night and carry it upstairs when he puts himself to bed.
He loves his people, and he comes running every time the door opens, because that’s what dogs do.
Long hours for a short, sweet dog
Murphy’s four kids are turning into adults, because that’s what children do. The twins, the youngest, are 20, and the past few years, everyone has gathered for a ski trip to Utah.
That’s where they were on Friday, March 6, when Harvey bolted.
It’s all somewhat murky — the dog sitter said she was making meatballs at 2:30 a.m., the smoke alarm went off, and Harvey sprinted away when she opened the door — and Murphy didn’t hear the story until a neighbor called 12 hours later.
Catching flights as seats opened, the family arrived on three different airplanes. By the time Murphy snared a standby spot at 6 a.m. Sunday, March 8 and made it home, neighbors had already passed out the first set of handbills.
That 12-hour delay remains troubling, however. “I probably could have had 20 people over here with flashlights in the middle of the night,” she said.
It could be that would have solved the problem. Or it could be her long dining room table would still be the Harvey command center, with rolls of tape and stacks of things to attach it to, lists of shelters and veterinarians to keep dialing, and even a carton of plastic sandwich bags filled with dog treats and Harvey’s photo, in case he needed to be lured from beneath a stranger’s deck.
Harvey has become her job, 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., every day.
“I have two moods right now,” she said. “Either I’m running on adrenaline, or I start to cry.”
Tracks lead to tires
Harvey wasn’t microchipped because Murphy never anticipated the need. He wasn’t wearing a collar because it was the middle of the night.
Twelve days after he ran away, on March 18, the three canine assistants of licensed private investigator Karin TarQwyn tracked him to the end of a driveway about a mile from Murphy’s house.
What that suggested, Murphy said, is that on a foggy, misty morning, a sympathetic soul in a car picked him up.
Apologetic that she couldn’t do more, Murphy said, TarQwyn left behind detailed maps and instructions on where to look, what scents to leave and how best to lure Harvey home, if she’s wrong and he’s roaming.
For all of that, plus a two-day drive from Peru, Nebraska, TarQwyn charged $3,000, a reasonable price for also delivering hope.
“I realize we’ve done something bigger than a lot of people,” said Murphy, who used to work in finance and whose husband, Patrick, is a consulting CFO. But what better could they invest in?
The trick now is to get Harvey’s picture in front of whatever theoretical Samaritan has been enjoying his company. Hence, the continued trips to the quick-print shop, and the reach-out to the Detroit Free Press.
Murphy had never owned a dog until her early 40s. For a while, the family had three — Rocket, a lab mix rescue who was napping Monday while Murphy worked, plus a beagle named Snoopy, and Harvey.
“All of a sudden, I became a crazy dog lady,” Murphy said.
Then, Snoopy died in July, at 14½, and now Harvey has disappeared.
The welcome mat at the front door says, “There’s like a lot of dogs in here,” but right now there aren’t, and Murphy feels a little bit lost herself.
Reach Neal Rubin at NARubin@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Drones and a detective have looked for this dog, but he’s still lost
Reporting by Neal Rubin, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
