“Harmony” ~ Case 426

Harmony normally lives with her mom in Washington.  Her mom is a service member of the Armed Forces and she had to deploy and left Harmony in the care of a family member.  Harmony was left in the backyard by herself unsupervised during a storm and she got spooked, jumped onto the shed and over the fence.  

Her owner’s family has been doing their very best to locate her and hand capture her for over a week but they were unsuccessful.  Initially, we were backlogged with other cases as well as the location being outside of our regular service area so we were giving her owner and the family guidance.  Unfortunately they just could not get control over social media and couldn’t get the word out enough for people not to approach or follow her.  When we finished with our last case, we offered to deploy our team on the case since Harmony’s mom is deployed and serving our country.

‼️Harmony has severe anxiety issues, and has always been very skittish of anyone besides her owner.  Harmony came from a backyard breeding situation where she had been stuck in a kennel all of her life unsocialized and traumatized until she was finally rescued.  Her mom has come along way with her through her rehabilitation but she still has a long way to go.  Now that she is on the run, she is even more petrified and will continue eluding any human contact so it is critical that nobody approach her.  She cannot be hand captured.  We will be trapping her in our large corral trap. 

Harmony has already traveled over 25 miles in just a few days.  

➡️ We need the public’s help by reporting exact sighting locations to our team.  Please DO NOT CALL ANIMAL CONTROL.  They have been unsuccessful at capturing her, and our team needs sightings immediately in real time in order to track her more precisely.  Tracking her also helps us with precise and strategic locations to deploy our feeding station locations until she intercepts one. This helps us locate, track and condition her for capture.  

We strongly believe that more people are seeing Harmony but they don’t know who to contact.  Please help us share our flyer to all of your neighborhood social pages and Nextdoor!  

Below is her case timeline where we will publish updates in real time and please check back here regularly for pertinent updates.  

Our team put boots on the ground and we are surveying the area and conducting an aerial search.  

We located Harmony during our thermal aerial search tonight in a large field in Nevada.  She was just wandering around aimlessly therefore we were unable to locate her den because she wasn’t resting in one.  Our truck dash cam also captured video of her while we were conducting our aerial search as she inadvertently walked right through our take off and landing zone.  We ignored her and she trotted the other way.  

Once she was out of our flight area, we deployed a video monitored feeding station as quickly as possible and then we traveled to a new flight location to stay clear of the feeding station area.  

We are hopeful she will return to the immediate area and visit the feeding station overnight.  If she does then we will be deploying our large corral trap early tomorrow morning. ~~ If she doesn’t return then we will utilize your reported sightings to help us deploy additional feeding stations in strategic locations that allow for her to intercept a station.  

Our team is going home for the evening and going to let the feeding station do its job overnight.  Paws crossed she shows up overnight or tomorrow morning.

Harmony did not visit the feeding station overnight and neither did any wildlife.  Good Samaritan and volunteer “Cole” replenished our feeding station this morning with fresh food.  If she is still in the area she should visit the station soon!   ~~ We are standing by awaiting new sightings where we will attempt to get in front of her travels and deploy a video monitored feeding station in her path or vicinity.  ‼️Sightings should be reported only to our team as as soon as possible for these reasons. 

We received a confirmed sighting this morning and she is now running in south Nevada.  

For now we are going to keep our existing feeding station in its current location and keep the food replenished twice per day in the event that she circles back around to that area.  This is a normal part of the process and we will attempt to deploy multiple feeding stations in her path until she intercepts one.  Once she does, she should stop running as long as we have the station hidden well enough where nobody sees her.

We have had several people reach out to us with suggestions on us using a tracking scent dog to locate her.  We very much appreciate everyone’s suggestions.  We have a lot of experience in tracking and capturing elusive dogs so we’d like to give you some insight as to why tracking scent dogs should not be used in Harmony’s  case.  We have a lot of experience utilizing tracking scent dogs and there are certain case criteria when that would be a valuable resource, but Harmony’s isn’t one of them.  

We asked the family to pull out the volunteer canine scent tracker yesterday.  He could track her all day long but when/if he located her, she would RUN at even the first sight of him and his dog.  This would inadvertently push her further and further away.  Extremely elusive dogs like Harmony who are also in prolonged flight mode from the trauma of being on the run are almost impossible to hand capture.  In this state of mind they are not your typical lost pet who would walk right up to you. Canine scent trackers are only good for locating friendly, non anxiety dogs, or severely injured, dying, or deceased dogs.  Extremely elusive dogs like Harmony should never be tracked from the ground using canines.  It only hinders her capture efforts. 

We hope this helps shed some light on Harmony’s situation, and the gravity of what it’s going to take to get her to stop running and ultimately capture her.  ~~ With the public’s help by reporting sightings, we will successfully track her and capture her as long as everyone completely avoids her when they see her.  It can take us a few days to saturate social media and neighborhoods enough to get the word out to everyone but we are working hard to do just that.  We appreciate all of your help in spreading the word.  

We will continue conducting aerial searches and tracking her based on your sightings.  

She is currently in Nevada, so please re-share a link to this page and her flyer to all social media pages in Nevada and immediately surrounding areas. 

Cole replenished the feeding station with fresh food this evening.  We had a confirmed sighting this morning further south than the feeding station but it’s possible she will circle back around to the north. 

We are gathering and logging all previous sightings (prior to us taking her case) on our case map and we are starting to see that she is returning to some of the same areas more than once. This is excellent news!  Once we put all of this information together, it will help us predict where and which direction she will travel.   

‼️SHE IS ON THE RUN, COVERING A LOT OF GROUND DAILY!  She has traveled from Garland, to Rowlett, Dalrock, Rockwall, Fate, then far north to Nevada.

Tragically we found Harmony deceased just moments ago. She had been struck by a vehicle on FM 6 in Nevada shortly after a 04:30 sighting in that area. 😓😰💔 We contacted Harmony’s mom Makayla immediately. 

We received two more sightings late last night but unfortunately someone was shooting off fireworks both to the east and west in the vicinity where she was being seen. She was running so fast in circles to try to get away from the fireworks and that hindered our ability to get ahead of her to deploy a new feeding station in her path.  More than 90% of all sightings reported her traveling in the middle of a roadway.  😓 She was in eminent danger the entire time. 

Harmony died instantly from blunt force trauma and she did not suffer.  Her harness was partially detached but intact.   

Find some comfort in knowing that we are able to give her family closure instead of something happening to her and never knowing what happened. 

Team members Cindy and Debbie are transporting Harmony to Veterinary Emergency Group and we will be arranging a cremation on Makayla’s behalf since she is still deployed with the military.  Mutts & Mayhem Emergency Search and Rescue will cover the cost of all final arrangements.  

R.I.P. Sweet Harmony.  We were so close to helping you stop running scared and bringing you to safety. We are devastated. We will always love you!  💔

A very special Thank you to Cole and Billy for all of your assistance, and to all of you amazing Good Samaritans for reporting sightings and sharing our social media.  We love you so much! 

Team members Cindy & Debbie transported precious Harmony‘s body to our veterinary team for a post mortem assessment so that the family will have complete closure.  

Our medical team said that Harmony’s spinal cord was completely severed and that caused her immediate death.  We scanned her microchip for extra confirmation. Her private cremation has been arranged.