[charalson64]

Hi there, I’m new to this forum and am desperate. I feel like I’ve run out of options. We live in a small rural town (Montrose, CO). Over a month ago, our beloved 3 y.o. Miniature Dachshund jumped out of our parked car and we didn’t notice until it was too late. When we realized he was not in our back seat, we went back to where we lost him and searched for hours for him.

Our town is small and we have posted over 1,000 flyers in every place possible. He is skittish around strangers, so we don’t believe he could have been caught. We have contacted our local animal shelter and police along with animal shelters within a 500 mile radius. We had two spottings of him the night he disappeared and one spotting 5 days later (all within a ¼ mile of where we lost him). We placed a box with one of our sweatshirts and some treats in it where he was lost in hopes that he would find the smell and go there. We removed the box after a month (the treats were still inside, so we know he never returned to the site.)

We have been out in the daytime, dusk, dawn and middle of the night to try and find him. We take his best buddy (our other dog) with us when we go out in hopes that she will be able to help coax him out. We have placed ads in our local papers and on our local radio stations. We have consulted with a doggy PI and numerous Dachshund Rescue organizations. We are heartbroken and are giving up hope that we will ever find him. The area in which he was lost is a mish mash of commercial, industrial, residential and park/open space. Our city has a large feral cat population and our vet has said that a lot of people feed them, so I can only assume that he has found a place to hide that has a food and water source.

I’m wondering: is there anything we can do differently then what we are doing now? If we could get someone to confirm a sighting, we could try and use a safe trap to try and lure him in with food, but we have had no sightings since the initial ones over a month ago. We have offered a large reward and continue to update flyers. We are afraid that after being gone so long, he won’t come to his name (even if it is us that is calling it).

Has anyone out there had a similar experience in searching for a scared, lost dog that has been missing for so long? Can anyone offer us some alternate ideas on how to search for him? thanks so much for reading this.