ST. LOUIS – The Center of Animal Rescue and Enrichment (CARE STL) helps operate and manage the St. Louis City Animal Care Control Shelter. They rescue stray, injured, and owner-surrendered animals in the area.
Gooney is one of the 60 or so dogs at CARE. He’s had a bit of a rough past but recently found a foster home in March.
“He went to a foster home for about two hours and then, unfortunately, accidents happen, and he got loose from his foster parents home, and he was on the run for one month and two days after leaving for his foster home,” said Valerie Strobo, the director of development and marketing at CARE.
Andrea Wolf is a volunteer at CARE and led the efforts to help find Gooney.
“We had a lot of volunteers – myself, Scott, and some other people – who posted flyers all over Chesterfield really,” said Wolf. “We were out there many days putting up flyers, driving around, really just trying to bring him home.”
Wolf also reached out to dog tracker and owner of LTR K9 Resource Scott Bouchard for his expertise.
To their surprise, Gooney was on the streets but he was not struggling. He would make his rounds from the doggy den he created for himself to a local restaurant where workers would feed and play with him.
The restaurant would like to remain nameless for legal reasons.
“One of the employees from a local business in Chesterfield reached out to me on Facebook. She had seen one of the posts about [Gooney] and she said, ‘I’m sure that’s the dog that’s been hanging around that we’ve been feeding and throwing scraps out for.’ So, I drove out there and showed them some more pictures of him and they were like, ‘It’s totally him,’” Wolf said.
Bouchard then made his way out to the area to find Gooney and set a dog trap. It took a couple of days, but once they went looking for him, it only took about 20 minutes to find him.
Strobo, Wolf, and Bouchard were thankful to all who communicated and were involved in rescuing the dog. Gooney is now at the CARE center to decompress before returning to his foster family.
