Elusive Stray “Suki” ~Case 416

We received a tag on Facebook about a stray black dog in Plano, Texas who was roaming a large field off of Hwy 121.  The Good Samaritans stated that they had contacted Plano Animal Control previously but they weren’t sure if an officer responded to the site.  We will be following up with animal control tomorrow.  If they have tried but have been unable to capture her, our team will take over her case. 

Even though we are working another case in Celina, we decided to go ahead and deploy our team tonight and we setup a video monitored feeding station just to keep her in the area and start conditioning her for capture.  

Please DO NOT FEED her.  We need for her to only eat at our feeding station.  

Early this morning she showed up to our feeding station (watch video ⬆️).  There wasn’t much food left in the bowl because a coyote had eaten most of the food just moments before she arrived (they normally don’t eat our food but this coyote was exceptionally hungry).  One of our team members went back to the site at 06:30 this morning to put out more food.  As of 08:30 she has yet to show back up and eat. 

From our detailed video analysis of her at our feeding station, it appears that her rear left leg may be injured. 

*Competing with the wildlife is a normal part of the process given the area she is in and during evening feedings.  Large dogs like her typically run the coyotes off. 

We spoke to Debbie with Plano Animal Control and she explained that they have received numerous reports about her over the past few months but their officers have never been able to locate her.  Animal Control uses animal-triggering box traps to capture dogs and under the current city ordinance they are not allowed to set their traps when temperatures will drop below 40° on any given day.   However, our team CAN deploy our corral trap because we have full electronic control over [who] and [when] we capture and our team is always on site during the actual capture process.  We will be maintaining our daily feeding station, trying to get her on a schedule and conditioning her for capture.  Stay tuned to this page for daily updates. 

Please DO NOT FEED her.  We need for her to eat only at our feeding station in preparation for capture. 

Team member Ginny put fresh food out early this morning just ahead of the time she visited the feeding station yesterday.  She never showed back up to eat yesterday or overnight so we hope she shows up this morning or today. 

She finally returned to eat tonight. We will be replenishing the food tomorrow morning.  We are finishing another capture case and we will be setting up our Corral Trap very soon for her capture. 

She has eaten at our feeding station for the past three days while we were working another case.  Before we capture her, we wanted to follow her from the air from our feeding station to see where she is going. She showed up tonight on schedule so we tracked her.  She wandered aimlessly over a large area but she always returned to the same spot next to the roadway as if she is waiting for her family to return for her.  Tonight’s tracking flight and her repeated behaviors suggest that she is simply lost or she was abandoned next to the roadway and she is living in the creek and tunnels.  

She showed up at the feeding station shortly after we landed our final flight.  We are deploying our Corral Trap tomorrow in hopes for an evening capture between 18:00-22:00.  We will be broadcasting LIVE on Facebook while we are staging. Join us! 

Our team (Cindy, Selena, Debbie & Ginny) arrived on site and deployed our Corral Trap in a 10’ X 10’ configuration approximately 75 yards from her existing feeding station. We needed to put the Corral in a different and more isolated location from the original feeding station in order to avoid humans from lingering nearby.  Our team will stage on site 100 yards from the Corral from now till tomorrow morning awaiting her arrival.  When she goes into the Corral and we confirm she is clear of the door via our live feed inside the Corral, we will remote trigger the door.  

She visited the previous feeding station twice overnight looking for food but she has not yet visited the Corral Trap.  We were staged only a few yards away.  

Our Team staged on site all afternoon and overnight for more than 18 hours and she did not show up at the Corral.  She did visit her previous feeding station a couple of times overnight but there was no food there as we will only feed her inside the Corral in order to prepare her for capture.  Our team is going home for some much needed rest.  

The plan for now is to lock the Corral door open and condition her to going inside.  We will put fresh food inside the corral daily until she is fully conditioned to eating inside and on somewhat of a schedule.  We freshened the liquid smoke trail and trailed some dried beef lung treats from Hollywood Feed.  After she is fully conditioned to the corral trap, we will plan her capture and we will go LIVE during staging. 

We will let you know as soon as she goes inside.  

Thank you for your support! ❤️🐾

Team members Selena and Ginny freshened the food inside the Corral this afternoon taking out the old food and putting in new.  Hopefully she will show up tonight around her usual feeding time.  

She showed up at the previous feeding station again like clockwork looking for food.  She found the Dried Beef Lung Tips we left for her but she did not follow the trail of them to the Corral. 😰 ~ For some reason she is completely avoiding the area where we have the Corral, most likely to avoid the wildlife.  

We are moving to Plan B in order to adapt to her demands.  We will be leaving the Corral setup in its current location for now but tomorrow morning we will be setting up a new feeding station location for her in an isolated location.  Once she is eating at the new location, we will relocate the Corral to that exact spot!  

Today was a very busy day for our team.  Since she absolutely refuses to visit the current corral location, we decided to set up a new feeding station in one of her daytime dens that we discovered through one of our many aerial searches.  We waited for her to leave her den and then we deployed the food and a camera.  Once she starts eating there, our plan was to move the corral to this new location.  Within 2 hours of setting up the new den feeding station she returned to her den and ate her dinner. Brisket and Bacon on top of wet dog food for the win!

‼️Unfortunately an eager teenage coyote also showed up in her den and the coyote was bullying her away especially now that food was there.  This is behavior we rarely see as coyotes typically don’t dominate a feeding station. This new intel explains why she has not visited the Corral in its current location.  Based on her erratic behavior and constant den location changes, it’s apparent she is essentially being hunted and bullied by this one coyote in particular.  The 2nd coyote is afraid of her which is more typical.  The coyote continued to camp out at her den station and prevent her from returning so we knew it was not going to be a good location for capture.  A decision was made to move the station to a new location that coyotes are far less likely to go.  Unfortunately, there are more humans in that area so we will have to see if she will tolerate it being as elusive as she is. Hopefully humans comply and don’t linger or approach her.  

VIDEO ⬆️: Coyote shows up at the 2 minute mark. 

Thankfully she visited the new feeding station early this morning. Beef Brisket on top of wet dog food again for our sweet girl. She left the dog food untouched because she ate just a few hours ago so she is full and being choosy. 😛 ~A lot of the work we do behind the scenes on a case is tactical problem solving and constantly adapting to their environmental demands.~ After the rare feisty coyote incident yesterday we now understand exactly why she has never visited the Corral’s current location. There were no coyote visitors overnight so she should enjoy the new location.  We will be relocating the Corral to the new feeding location.  

She is a dinner kinda girl so tentatively we are planning for staging and capture Friday late afternoon & evening!  We will stream LIVE on Facebook so if you wanna stage with us, mark your calendars and turn on notifications for our Facebook page. 

She showed up on schedule tonight to eat.  We are moving the corral tomorrow in preparation for capture!  

Oh my… where do we begin?!  We set up our new feeding station location today and she came and ate tonight like clockwork. Once she left the area, our team moved the corral to this new feeding station location.  She usually shows back up between midnight and 3 AM so we are hoping she will come again tonight for a snack and that she just walks right in!  

‼️Y’all are not going to believe this! 😱 There is a second stray dog in this same exact area.  We wanted confirmation, so we are on site right now conducting an aerial search and we and found her in one of her dens.  We are setting up a feeding station for her right now.  Please visit https://muttsandmayhem.org/case417-planotx for case details as they are developing this evening. 

Her feeding station was replenished on this wet and gloomy evening.  She was lurking nearby the corral when we arrived but she hadn't went inside yet. Hopefully she goes into the corral overnight tonight. If she does then we will stage for capture tomorrow night and stream live on FB.  ~~ If she DOESN'T go inside tonight, we will need to condition her further.  PAWS CROSSED!  

SHE DID IT!!! 😃 She finally ate inside the corral.  Our team will be on site at 16:00 (4pm) today to stage for capture and we will be live streaming on social media. If you aren’t busy, please join us!  She typically comes to eat between 17:00 and 21:00

We absolutely made the right call last night by letting her go directly to Plano Animal Services post capture.  We would not have been able to take her to our medical team last night due to a safety issue for her as well as our team and medical staff.   Our team visited her this afternoon and she is still very fearful, reactive, and she doesn’t appear to be completely cognitive either.  They haven’t been able to get close enough to scan her for a microchip or vaccinate her and like us, they believe in giving her a little more time before stressing her out further by muzzling her and forcing it on her.  This could just be fear and she needs more time to decompress or it could be a medical issue causing this behavior, behavior she doesn’t know is happening or want to happen.  

Due to her being fearful, non-cognitive, reactive, her excessive drooling, possible facial swelling, and her physical confrontation with the coyote on 11/6/23, she is now in distemper and rabies isolation.  A veterinarian will assess her on Monday but most likely it will not be a hands on assessment.  She will continue to be closely assessed daily.  

⛑️ We confirmed today that she is favoring her rear left leg but we are confident that it is not fractured and her ability to rest should help.  She does have goopy eyes and she may not feel well on top of everything else.  She has several small facial wounds with varying stages of healing and scaring so it is possible that she has had numerous altercations with the coyote.  The wounds do not require medical intervention.  We also noticed in some of our videos that she seems a little off balance at times.  This could be something as simple as Vestibular syndrome (causes balance, vision disturbances, and aggression issues which is treated with Meclizine).  We have seen it before so it’s on our radar.  

Her shelter intake link is not working this evening but we will find out why tomorrow.  Rest assured she is safe!  ♥️ We took her cheeseburgers today and Eddie gave them to her while we were there.  You’ll notice in the video that she is still growling and showing her teeth even though we were not making eye contact and we were on the other side of the glass.  Poor baby has had it rough but at least she is no longer struggling to survive on the streets. We will be visiting with her regularly and we promise to keep you updated.  

Poor baby is still showing teeth, growling, and lunging. 

We do not have much information for this update, but we will post it as soon as we have it later today. This is a recording of our phone call with animal services this morning.

CALL AUDIO: 

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/nmanafhovs2a10f5lj8wz/PAS_Florrie_20231114_Case416_DO-NOT-DELETE.mp3?rlkey=kidgu99b34h3pcnrvgqa9wtku&dl=0

Check back tomorrow for more information.  We have reached out to the owner just moments ago and we are waiting to hear back.  

The owner Savannah’s phone number linked to the microchip was disconnected.  Our team went to work investigating and we found her on social media.  We sent messages and an email.  She contacted us fairly quickly.  We learned that she had renamed Dobbie to Suki and she rehomed her about a year ago because Suki kept biting people and she was having a baby and was worried for the baby’s safety.  ~~ Savannah explained that she had adopted Dobbie from Dallas Pets Alive and she allegedly tried to return her to Dallas Pets Alive after multiple biting incidents, but they refused to take her back so she rehomed her herself, realizing later she unknowingly rehomed her into a terrible situation.  

🔴LISTEN TO OUR PHONE CALL WITH SAVANNAH HERE:  https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6tg98gg9i42eph27i2s0a/2023-11-15_Savannah_prev-owner-Case-416.mp3?rlkey=yc31wtpy8tl196tycbfnisbah&dl=0

________TIMELINE_______

9/14/2020: Dallas Pets Alive advertised for North Texas Giving Day.  There is a picture of Dobbie with a family, adults, kids, and another big dog.  Also the shelter picture is Dallas Animal Services 

https://www.facebook.com/DallasPetsAlive/posts/pfbid021NzE2LuMwsDfccDWob5T74oVvHEr4jsbFHf9cTXgrXTdfYoUsUgyEMDzTkxAbUWCl

10/21/2020: Dallas Pets Alive states Dobbie was adopted a few days prior and then was surrendered to Fort Worth Animal Care & Control.

10/30/2020: Dallas Pets Alive posts a video with Dobbie which looks like her in a new foster home with 2 other dogs. https://www.facebook.com/DallasPetsAlive/videos/1068468693575305

12/15/2020: Savannah adopted Dobbie from Dallas Pets Alive

01/18/2022: Savannah posted on Facebook about rehoming Suki (see below for photo). 

01/25/2023: A year later, Savannah rehomed Dobbie/Suki to a man whose name we do not know, and Savannah did not want to give out his information because of his horrid circumstances.  

11/10/2023: Captured by MMESAR and AC took her to Plano Animal Services. 

Needless to say this poor girl has been through hell and back.  Her leg is pretty swollen and we are hoping to find out today if the veterinarian on site today will be giving her Rimadyl for pain.   We promise to post any new information as we have it. 

She has been receiving rimadyl for pain twice a day for a week and a half now but she still hasn’t shown any signs of improvement in her demeanor or mentation.  It’s even worse at times.  The staff and contract veterinarian are worried that she might have a neurological problem from birth or from some sort of trauma.  She is still on rabies hold in the far back area of the shelter so we are not able to see her.  It is a staff only area.  😓💔

She was euthanized due to suspected rabies or a severe neurological injury.  We had hoped her condition would improve, and we thought it did for a very short time, but then she rapidly deteriorated, and was unable to be handled whatsoever.  We are thankful that we were able to get her off of the street so that she did not suffer. 

We will always love you precious girl.