(UPDATE: Jan. 20, 2019 @ 6:30 a.m.) - The owner of Chance, a dog discovered along the Coquihalla by highway maintenance employees, has been found. Carlie Holman says she has been in contact with the owner, who is a truck driver from out of town.
The dog's name is actually Archer, and he will be reunited with his owner sometime this afternoon. The owner saw the story from Calgary and recognized his dog, Holman explained.
"He cried, I cried. Best news ever!" says Holman.
We will update this story as more information becomes available.
(Original Story: Jan. 19, 2019)
A B.C. woman is searching for the owner of a dog she found along the Coquihalla Highway on Friday afternoon.
Carlie Holman says she noticed the dog, who is going by the name Chance, sitting up on a snowbank between the Snowshed and Zopkios break check.
Chance is a name she gave him due to the second chance he’s been given, and also because she “grew up watching Homeward Bound.”
Holman works for VSA Highway Maintenance and was out snowplowing the Coquihalla on Friday afternoon at around 1 p.m. when a coworker came on the radio saying there was a dog up on a hill. She says that she went back, accompanied by her forman Ron, and searched for the dog. Eventually they spotted him sitting up on a snowbank from a runaway lane.
Holman says that because of the fresh tracks they saw and the fact that it hadn't snowed since that morning, they guess that he could have been out there for hours. They climbed the snowbank and tried to coax the dog down. He was shivering and scared, Holman says, and was very skittish and was growling a little bit.
Ron went back to the truck to get gloves just in case, and while he was gone, Holman slowly got closer until she was able to let him sniff her hand.
“He jumped on me and started kissing me and stuff, and then of course we got him down,” she recalled.
Holman is keeping Chance with her for now while she tries to find his owner. Chance doesn’t have any tags or tattoos, and has been checked over at the vet for a microchip with no success. He was wearing a collar and a leash that Holman says had a broken plastic part at the end.
The vet estimated that Chance is between 1 to 2-years-old, and is a Labrador/Mastiff cross. Holman says that Chance does seem like he was a pet, as he does know some commands and is good with children and with riding in the car.
Holman has had a few people reach out about Chance, but none of them turned out to be his owner.
If she isn’t able to reunite Chance with his family, she says she is seriously thinking about adopting him as her own.
“He’s doing really good, he’s super well-fed now and he’s actually napping,” Holman said this afternoon. “I just really hope we can find his owners. I really think that he was loved.”
If you have any information about Chance, email Holman at [email protected].
