It’s a tale pulled straight from a Jack London novel.
The star of this story is a dog named Jackie — a German shepherd-husky mix.
Jackie escaped her family in Alaska in mid-February, and she hasn’t been caught since, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
In early January, Jackie was a stray roaming the streets of Los Angeles before she was captured and taken to a shelter.
Then the Greater Los Angeles wildfires happened.
Overburdened with strays, the L.A. County dog pound considered euthanizing Jackie.
In the nick of time, however, she was adopted by a family in Juneau, Alaska.
But on the first day with her new family, Jackie ditched her collar before escaping into the forest.
Rescued from a California shelter after devastating wildfires, Jackie was adopted by a family in February but slipped her collar and fled into a forested area. https://t.co/TJNGz0w4OE
— FOX6 News (@fox6now) April 3, 2025
Will this dog ever be captured?
“Maybe this is what she wants, is to be free and feral like this,” said Thom Young-Bayer, a Juneau animal control officer. “It’s not a safe way for her to live here.”
Animal control and volunteers deployed several traps for her, including baiting her with cheeseburgers and chicken.
But Jackie didn’t fall for them.
“We have her on video and she walks around it. She really gauges the situation. She’s looking 360 degrees around and she doesn’t make any mistakes,” Mike Mazouch of Juneau Animal Rescue said, according to Alaska’s News Source.
Jackie also burrows into moss and avoids looking directly into headlamps at night, making detection difficult.
Jackie, a German shepherd-husky mix, was rescued from an overburdened shelter in Los Angeles County after the devastating wildfires. https://t.co/D3RdDHTUym
— Anchorage Daily News (@adndotcom) April 2, 2025
But Young-Bayer said the search team is making progress.
Jackie used to flee any time she spotted a search party member.
Now, Young-Bayer says he sees Jackie on every visit to the forest.
She also frequents her feeding station.
“She does this circular pattern, and the weather’s been really good in Juneau lately — the last five or six days it’s been sunny and 45 to 50 [degrees] — so she’s out getting sun, running around, checking out her areas, and then she disappears for a while, and then we see her almost every night at her feeding station,” Mazouch said.
Lately, however, due to the danger of bears awakening from hibernation, search volunteers have stopped leaving food.
“We’re building the familiarity with her and the comfort that we’re not gonna hurt her,” Mazouch said.
“We’re going to be here forever trying to catch her, you know, we’ll put that time into her,” he added.
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