Volunteers traced tips across a 10-mile radius after Burt slipped his leash at a foster home
Credit: KTLA 5/YouTube
NEED TO KNOW
- A dog named Burt was lost after slipping away from a foster family shortly after being rescued
- Volunteers tracked Burt across a 10-mile radius using trail cameras and cages stocked with water
- Burt survived encounters with coyotes, traffic and a mountain lion before being safely captured
A Yorkie mix spent two weeks on its own in the California wilderness, surviving coyotes, traffic and a mountain lion, according to KTLA 5 News.
Kim Sill, founder of the nonprofit Shelter Hope, reported rescuing the 9-lb. dog about three months ago in the orchards in south Bakersfield.
Credit: KTLA 5/YouTube
Sill noted that her team was cautiously optimistic about placing the dog with a foster family, as the dog was almost immediately lost.
“The leash got out of his hand and he got away,” Sill said of the foster family.
Shelter Hope and volunteers distributed flyers across the Thousand Oaks area and began working through incoming tips about sightings of Burt, eventually tracing eyewitness reports across a roughly 10-mile radius. Multiple callers reported seeing Burt struck by a vehicle and believed he was dead.
However, Sill told KTLA that a resident called at 2 a.m. to report the dog was hiding underneath their car with three coyotes circling the vehicle.
According to the bystander, Burt got away again before anyone could reach him. Sill later described him as unsocialized, fearful of people and “very savvy of the terrain.”
Volunteers with Dog Days Search and Rescue then set up cages stocked with water alongside trail cameras, per KTLA 5 News reporting. Over the following week, the cameras recorded Burt near busy roads and in the presence of coyotes and a mountain lion. He was eventually brought in safely.
Sill credited the outcome to the community, the volunteers and the dog’s own persistence, and told the outlet that searches like this one frequently end differently.
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