Hope amid the dead ends

By Liz Farrell

Missy Staie left her house as soon as there was daylight Dec. 30.

She drove alone from Isle of Hope, Ga., where she lives with her husband, Rick, and their two dogs and two cats.

During the 45 minutes it takes to get to Bluffton, she replayed the events from the previous day in her head.

She beat herself up, as one does in these situations.

How did this happen?

What could I have done differently?

Did I do enough to get him back?

Instead of her dog, Finn, Staie now had a thick stack of fliers with his picture on them.

“LOST DOG … He is scared but friendly.”

Finn, whom the Staies had adopted just 2 1/2 months prior, had run away. He was now somewhere out there in a town and state that were not his, and in a town and state his owners were not familiar with.

He had come from a shelter in Savannah and was fearful of humans, but after behavioral rehabilitation and getting adopted, he had come out of his shell quite a bit.

The day Finn came home with them, the Staies gave him a new collar, a pricey multicolored one made from recycled tires that promised to be “anti-stink.” Later, Missy Staie posted a photo she had taken of their new dog on the shelter’s Facebook page.

In it, Finn is standing on a tan dog bed and giving the camera a big, pink Muppet-y smile.

He looked jolly.

“He has settled down and is napping,” Staie wrote. “We will keep you guys posted on his progress.”

Finn had gone rogue just as his life was getting good.

. . .

The day before, Staie and Anna Belue, her friend and next-door neighbor, had taken their dogs to the beach on Hilton Head Island and then stopped for lunch at Fat Patties, a burger restaurant in Old Town Bluffton.

It was there that Finn was startled by some noise and ran away.

Staie and Belue searched for him in Bluffton until it was too dark to see.

The next morning Belue and her boyfriend planned to meet Staie at Fat Patties so they could do it all over again.

On the drive to meet them, Staie kept telling herself, “We’ll find him … we’ll find him … we’ll find him.”

She stayed positive, but she was worried he hadn’t made it through the night.

That something, or someone, had gotten him.

The night before, Staie was emotional. She made Belue tell her how this had happened, to tell her every microsecond of action that had occurred from the moment Finn startled awake to the moment he ran off.

And then she made Belue tell it to her again.

And one more time, what happened?

“She was devastated,” Belue said of Staie. “He had to live this life again. This hard life again.”

Back in Bluffton, they drove slowly through town, street by street.

They hoped that he would be hungry by now and that he’d come when called.

They distributed the fliers.

They kept in touch with volunteers and people they had met the previous day.

Stephanie Lewis of Bluffton saw a post on Facebook about the Staies and Finn. She thought about how she would feel if this were her.

So she walked around Old Town for hours, yelling the name of a dog she had never met, owned by people she did not know.

“It just bothered me so much. I felt so badly for this couple,” Lewis said. “Finn had really no connection to them.”

Meanwhile in the car, Staie and Belue got the good news they had been waiting for.

A woman saw a dog that looked like Finn, and he was dragging a retractable leash a short distance away near Target.

Oh, thank goodness. He’s alive.

“We went to that area,” Belue said, “and looked and looked and looked.”

Nothing.

That night they returned home again without Finn.

He was still out there. Only newly unbroken but still timid. And no one was sure if he could fend for himself yet another night.

And so it went for the next several days.

The Staies and the various volunteers they met along the way searched all over Bluffton for Finn. A post on Beaufort County Animal Services’ Facebook page was shared hundreds of times.

It seemed that everyone knew about the sweet black-and-white dog — with a freckled blaze, big paws, floppy ears and a tail like a cartoon skunk — that had run away.

“A lot of people were looking for this dog,” said Tallulah Trice, Beaufort County Animal Services director.

And yet he remained missing.

There were sightings, of course, but most either didn’t match Finn’s description or, as it always turned out, were just the names of places where the dog that “might have been Finn” might have been before the Staies or a volunteer could get there.

Regardless, there were sightings, and sightings were good.

That offered the Staies hope that the dog they had just adopted wasn’t lost forever. And that maybe he would soon get the courage to go up to someone who could help him.

Still, it was unnerving.

“Any time I got the (843) area code,” Rick Staie said, “I thought something had happened. ‘Oh, this is it.’ ”

Then the sightings stopped altogether, but the Staies were determined to stay hopeful.

They both still believed that Finn would come home to them.

For a couple of days, they didn’t hear anything.

Until the evening of Jan. 8.

A dog that looked like Finn — a dog dragging its leash — had been spotted in an area near Spring Island.

That’s a 19-mile journey from Old Town Bluffton if you follow Bluffton Road to U.S. 278, take a left and, at S.C. 170, take a right.

And if you then take a right on Callawassie Drive.

And then pass a 24-hour manned security guard gate.

And then take Callawassie Drive to Spring Island Drive.

And then cross a bridge.

Of course, there is a much more direct route to Spring Island from Bluffton.

Keep walking until you hit the Colleton River.

Then swim.