Search for Gracie: Fluffy JoCo pup’s holiday escapade grabs attention, hearts

Gracie is 11 pounds of adorable fluff, a gray and white mini Aussie doodle who hit the canine jackpot when retired accountants Mike and Julie Hirons in Overland Park rescued her last summer.

Before she moved in with them, Gracie existed only to breed. She was not a pet. By the time the couple adopted her from a dog rescue in Louisburg, Kansas, 3-year-old Gracie had birthed two litters of pups — part miniature poodle, part miniature Australian Shepherd.

The Hirons didn’t know much about Gracie’s pre-JoCo life but saw how it left her — skittish in her new home even after months of belly scratches, treats, toys and yes, a new wardrobe.

“Her personality was … she was friendly but she was kinda shy. I just think she wasn’t socialized,” said Julie.

When the Hirons traveled out of town last month for an early Christmas, they left Gracie with a friend in their former neighborhood of Leawood Country Manor — a subdivision tucked between Nall and Roe avenues with College Boulevard on the north, 115th on the south,

The old Sprint campus, Town Center and Park Place shopping areas and the Jewish Community Center are in the same area.

On Dec. 20, the Sunday before Christmas, the sitter called Mike and Julie.

Gracie somehow wiggled her way out of the fenced backyard and took off. The friend, who had cared for Gracie several times, was “absolutely devastated,” said Julie.

Dog experts say many dogs who go missing disappear when they’re in the care of someone other than their owner.

As they drove three-and-a-half-hours back to Overland Park, the Hirons launched what became a 10-day search for Gracie, a quest that drew a lot of attention on social media and consumed the efforts and time of an army of strangers between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

Neighbors searched on foot and by car. Scores more on Facebook shared sightings. The volunteer-run Kansas City Dog Trappers got involved. The Hirons hired a professional dog tracker from Nebraska known as the K9 P.I. They hired a drone company.

Over those 10 days the Hirons got a crash course in the dos and don’ts of searching for a lost dog.

They also learned that in certain parts of Johnson County, dogs that disappear sometimes find their way into a wet, smelly hiding place their humans don’t know about.

After the first two days of her adventure, after two days of people seeing her running around parts of Leawood, Gracie fell off the radar for more than a week.

A Christmas miracle never came.

She was a runner

No dog owner ever thinks about their pet going missing, so they don’t know what to do when it happens, said Karin TarQwyn, “the K9 P.I.”

For more than 23 years TarQwyn and her posse of trained search dogs have tracked down lost dogs across the country. The Hirons hired her when the search for Gracie stalled.

Gracie’s story is similar to most searches she conducts “because as much as 90% of my case load are STARS,” TarQwyn said.

That’s the acronym she uses to describe dogs that are shy, timid, aloof, reserved or skittish — STARS.

Those dogs tend to be reactive. “They don’t like change and they overreact when something scares them and they bolt,” said TarQwyn.

After interviewing the Hirons, TarQwyn knew she wasn’t searching for a confident, outgoing dog who would walk up to anyone. She knew from the get-go that Gracie would never let a stranger approach her.

That’s why Gracie’s missing posters said “don’t chase.”

Some folks did anyway.

“Her situation was common. She was at a place that is not her home territory,” said TarQwyn. “Dogs that have that behavioral profile are just like adults who are anxious, nervous.

“It’s likely she went under the fence looking for a way to get out. These dogs don’t control their adrenaline well. So she goes out into the yard. ‘Oh my God, oh my God, I don’t know this place.’

“Then she finds a hole and starts running. Her adrenaline keeps pumping, causing her to keep running.”

The search is on

Before they even made it back to Johnson County, the Hirons called family, friends and animal control in Leawood and Overland Park to report Gracie missing. That’s exactly what pros like TarQwyn advise. As soon as a dog disappears, enlist other people’s eyes and ears.

Julie also posted news of Gracie’s disappearance on the Leawood Country Manor Facebook page.

The first reports had Gracie running loose on Nall, a heavily traveled north-south avenue.

When they got home the Hirons walked through the neighborhood, calling Gracie’s name until it got too dark to search.

They had never lost a dog and they know this now: Don’t yell out the dog’s name. It’s enough if they just see you.

“A dog like this is kinda frightened if you scream out her name. That doesn’t necessarily mean she’s going to come to you,” said Mike. “She may think she’s in trouble or something like that.

“The last thing you need people to do is walk through the neighborhood screaming her name. That’s just going to drive her away.”

They went to bed without Gracie in the house.

First day: Facebook and flyers

The next day a friend reported seeing Gracie near the Jewish Community Center on 115th Street, not far from the old Sprint campus. He tried to catch her, but she took off toward a construction site at 119th and Nall.

Meanwhile, Julie and family members delivered flyers to nearby businesses and posted them at major intersections in the Town Center area.

Friends spread the word on Facebook, including the Lost and Found Pets of Johnson County Kansas page — an active online gathering spot with nearly 42,000 members that the Hirons said was invaluable to the search. It became a go-to place for Gracie sightings and search updates.

“Of course we talked to Town Center security, we talked to Black & Veach security, we talked to Sprint campus security, anybody we thought that might have seen her between the Jewish Community Center and Tomahawk Creek,” said Julie.

“And so many people were like oh yeah, give me a flyer. I’ll tell my colleagues. People just really cared,” said Mike. “It was really heartwarming to see how much people cared and that they genuinely wanted to help.”

As the word spread, people told the Hirons to call in KC Dog Trappers. The all-volunteer group of mostly women humanely traps and rescues lost, stray and scared cats and dogs — more than 1,000 over the years, according to one count.

The group’s Karen Gortenburg works primarily in Johnson County.

“Gracie was your typical breeder release dog,” said Gortenburg, who wound up the hero of this dog’s tale. “She got loose accidentally and then was out there in the open with no skill set.

“The only thing Gracie had going for her was she had been with Mike and Julie for six months, so that was a good thing because she kind of knew people.”

But Gortenburg knew finding and trapping Gracie, all 11 fluffy pounds of her, would be tougher than rescuing a larger dog. “Smaller dogs are a little bit harder because they can really move and hide,” she said.

Small dogs can disappear for weeks. And they travel far.

Gortenburg successfully trapped another lost small dog last week, for instance, who had been on the run for three weeks, “running all over the place in south Olathe,” she said. “We just caught her and she’s fine.”

Lost time

On Christmas Eve, someone posted on the Lost Pets of JoCo Facebook page that they had seen Gracie three days earlier at the Tomahawk Creek Condominiums — across from Tomahawk Creek — shortly after she was reportedly seen near the Jewish Community Center.

“We were looking in all the wrong places Sunday, Monday and Tuesday,” said Mike.

He doesn’t fault the tipster. They were trying to help, he said. “It was good information. It was actually really, really important information,” he said. “It was just three days late.”

By then they had already walked through Leawood Country Manor with Gunnar, Mike’s mother’s dog who was also staying with the sitter on the night Gracie disappeared. Gracie likes Gunnar.

“We were walking him around and leaving his scent because we knew she loved him and she might get onto his scent and come back,” said Mike. “That was always our hope is that she would at least get back to where she was lost from.”

Gortenburg suggested the dog sitter set food and some of the Hirons’ clothing outside her house in case Gracie returned. She also set up trail cameras at the house, but the only images they captured were stray cats.

“By now it’s Wednesday, Christmas Eve, right, so we’re getting ready to put up more signs,” said Mike. “Actually, the night before, on Tuesday, is when we made contact with the lady from Nebraska.”

Busy with her own Christmas activities, TarQwyn told the Hirons she couldn’t make it to Kansas “for a few days, but I am going to help you right now.”

So she schooled them on posters.

No Gracie at Christmas

TarQwyn sent the Hirons a sign template of her own creation, with specifications for size, thickness of paper and lamination.

Printing them at Office Depot, “They were like five bucks a sign and they were invaluable,” said Mike. “Because now you had weatherproof signs that you could just post on poles. It was so much easier than trying to drive a stake in the ground on a homemade sign.”

TarQwyn even suggested the type of tape to use for the posters — waterproof Gorilla tape — and where to place them.

She tells dog owners to take four photos of their pups and have them ready in case the dog ever runs away. Cute pics of a dog lounging on the sofa aren’t helpful on a missing poster.

Two photos should show the dog from each side — full-body profile shots. Another should show them from the front, straight on, face and all. Another should show them from behind, because that might be the only thing witnesses see of dogs on the lam.

“If you have to look for your dog, you have to give the witness exactly what they’re going to see. You imprint that in their brain — in Gracie’s case, gray and white fluffy dog,” TarQwyn said.

Gortenburg told the Hirons what the sighting at the condos likely meant: Gracie was about to get on the 12-mile Tomahawk Creek Trail that begins at Leawood City Park and ends at Amesbury Lake in Overland Park near Pflumm Road.

Once these dogs get on the trail, Gortenburg warned, they can really go.

The Hirons spent most of Christmas Eve peppering the area around 119th and Mission Road with signs.

“So Christmas was pretty bleak,” said Mike. “We got all our signs posted during the day Christmas Eve. Then it was like, alright. It’s 4 o’clock, we’re done, now we’re just waiting. We just did our best to kinda get with family and go to Christmas Eve service, have a little family celebration.

“Then we were hosting one on Christmas Day so we had family at our house. And you know, there was just kind of a cloud over it. We’re all just, ‘We sure would like a call. We’re ready for a call.’”

At that point, they longed for a sighting. The family walked south along the creek trail on Christmas Day.

Nothing.

“We felt like every time we went out to search it was just like we didn’t even know if she was still in this area,” said Julie.

“At that point we’re just kind of desperate,” said Mike. “We’re getting no sightings. What do we do? I just wanted something to hold on to and direct us in where we should be searching.”

The PI and her dogs arrive

The warm weather left the area on the day TarQwyn and four search dogs arrived in Johnson County on Sunday, Dec. 28. The weather deteriorated as the day went on.

“By the time she was done at 4 p.m., it was miserable,” said Mike. “It was like 18 degrees and the wind was howling. It was ugly. And, she said, ‘Guys, I think the temperature dropped like 40 or 50 degrees during the day.’”

The weather concerned Julie.

“We just kept thinking, ‘If it gets cold, will she be able to survive?” she said. “And Karin said they’re really hardy. A lot of people were also asking what is she eating? What if she starves to death?

“Karin was really good about telling us the main thing a dog on the loose needs is water, and there’s so much water in that area. Ponds and creeks. She said they’ll find stuff to eat. It’s not stuff you or I would eat. But they’ll eat something. That’s not your main concern. Your main concern is water.”

TarQwyn asked the Hirons to have a piece of Gracie’s clothing ready for the search dogs. It had to be something that didn’t have any other dog’s scent. They chose a pink sweater.

“Step one was to let the dogs get the scent at the scene of the crime where she escaped,” said Mike. “She let the dog smell the sweater there and then have the dogs see if they could get on the scent in that yard. And they did.”

TarQwyn’s dogs found the scent trail leading away from the house.

They next went to Tomahawk Creek condos, the last place Gracie was seen. “Her point is, lots of people will say, ‘I saw and a dog and it kinda looked like yours,’ but who knows if it’s yours,” said Mike.

“At the time there were actually a lot of gray and white dogs missing,” said Julie.

TarQwyn’s dogs picked up a strong Gracie scent near the mailbox room there. “And Karin’s theory was somebody probably tried to corner her there and get her, and she let off pheromones or something,” said Mike.

“She had a nervous reaction and let off a bunch of scent. So she said the dogs were really strong on the spot near the mailboxes.

“Again, we don’t have any way of validating that, but that was her theory … that Gracie took off across Tomahawk Creek Parkway towards the creek.”

The dogs were right.

A stinky hiding place

TarQwyn and the dogs crossed the parkway, east toward the trail, where they made a discovery near 119th and Tomahawk Creek Parkway that surprised the Hirons.

The dogs followed Gracie’s scent to a stormwater drainage pipe in the area. The opening was about a foot in diameter, Mike said. Too small for an adult, “but Gracie could fit in there,” he said.

TarQwyn walked the dogs around the area and they picked up Gracie’s scent near multiple drain openings.

“And she said, ‘Honestly, I don’t know if this is good, guys,’” Mike recalled.

But TarQwyn didn’t know what Gortenburg does after years of searching for lost pets in Johnson County. Small dogs have roamed for days inside that network of pipes in Leawood.

TarQwyn thought the search had reached a dead end until she consulted Gortenburg. She took her dogs home to Nebraska after spending hours searching in the cold.

And the Hirons, staring at another holiday with no Gracie, updated their Facebook posts to keep people engaged and made more signs to post in the new location.

Finally, a sighting

The next day, Tuesday, Dec. 30 — after eight days with no sightings,— two people reported seeing Gracie. One man saw her at the Commerce Bank at 115th and Nall, not far from where she went missing.

He tried to catch her, but she ran.

The news spread quickly. People on a Gracie Search Party group text headed out. Leawood Animal Control was on the lookout because they had gotten a tip, too. Gortenburg was searching, as well.

“And all these people in Leawood Country Manor are walking around, people we don’t even know, just people that lived there who were following the story on Facebook,” said Mike.

“They were home with their kids for Christmas holiday, and everybody’s just engaged in the hunt for Gracie. I met multiple people that were out looking for Gracie. And again, people I never even met when I lived in Leawood Country Manor.”

Many people had suggested the Hirons hire a drone. Now that they had a fresh sighting, they did.

Gortenburg became concerned that with so many people out looking, Gracie might hide. So they planned that after lunch she, the Hirons and the drone guy would meet a couple blocks away from the bank by some office buildings.

That gave Mike enough time to go home and change into dry clothes. He’d been searching that morning along the creek and plunged through ice into the shallow, wintry water.

“Julie gets there a little after me,” said Mike. “Karen’s there. Julie’s getting out of her car walking towards me and Karen. I’m looking towards Nall and Karen almost tackles me and says, ‘There she is!’”

Gracie comes home

There was Gracie, running along a grassy embankment between the office buildings — and backyards of Leawood Country Manor.

Gortenburg, who knew how attached Gracie is to Julie, immediately told Julie to drop to her hands and knees and start talking to Gracie. “You have to make yourself approachable to the dog. They can’t be scared of you. They can’t think they’re in trouble,” Gortenburg said.

Julie did it, but she couldn’t really see Gracie for all the shrubbery and the berm in the way.

And then Gracie was gone.

Gortenburg saw her head north toward the houses, so she and Julie headed that way. People started calling Mike to report seeing Gracie in their backyards. He got worried.

“People were seeing her out of the back of their houses and of course they were trying to get her and she’s running,” he said. “And she’s small and flexible. She can squeeze through fences.

“In the end, ultimately, we keep getting these phone calls. One of Julie’s friends has a friend that lives in Leawood Country Manor and was like, ‘This dog is in my yard.’”

Julie and Gortenburg got to the house and for the first time in 10 days, Julie laid eyes on her little rescue pup.

She looked ... so small.

“I start crying,” said Julie. “I couldn’t believe it. And of course Karen says, ‘Don’t cry, don’t cry. She will sense that.’ So I’m trying to get it together.

“So I just start nicely calling her name and she just looked at me and she was looking at me like she did not even know who I was.

“I thought she would just run into my arms. But she just looked at me like, ‘I don’t know who you are, I’m just going to keep moving.’”

Gracie started walking. She left that yard and got into a fenced backyard two houses down. Julie and Gortenburg could see her, pacing near the fence like she was trying to find a way out.

Gortenburg told Julie to tell the homeowner they would be in their yard trying to rescue a dog and to not come outside. The man who answered the door asked Julie: “Is it Gracie?”

Then, it was just Gortenburg and Gracie.

A battle of wills and skills.

Gracie didn’t stand a chance.

She was ready to go home

You just have to know how to read a dog, said Gortenburg.

“It’s just an instinctual thing,” she said. “Most people don’t know what to do and I can’t teach it. I can’t teach a dog owner how to read a dog.

“It was just a series of great happenstances. And Gracie trusted me.”

Gortenburg was about 15, 20 feet from the yard’s picket fence. “So I got down on my hands and knees and crawled over to her,” she said.

She talked to Gracie as she crawled, head down, looking to the side, avoiding eye contact, stopping when she saw Gracie move. In a monotone kind of chant she reassured Gracie.

“Gracie, you’re such a good girl.”

“Do you want to go home?”

“Are you hungry, Gracie?“

“You cannot be emotional,” said Gortenburg. “It’s a rare owner that can be non-emotional. Dogs can read your emotions and Julie was bawling like crazy. I’m just slowly crawling up to her and Gracie’s pacing back and forth.”

Gortenburg was glad to see Gracie staying close to the fence. She sat back on her bottom when she reached it and kept talking to Gracie.

And when the dog finally stuck her cute little black nose through the fence, Gortenburg quickly slid a slip-lead leash through and got it around Gracie’s neck.

“Then I realized I had to stand up,” she joked, which she did carefully before leading Gracie to the gate.

Gortenburg is sure that the little runaway was ready to go home.

“Oh yeah, she was ready. The way she reacted once she realized that I was going to help her,” she said. “She had no idea who I was, but she all of a sudden realized I was there to help.”

“The fact that Karen was able to get that dog by hand speaks volumes of Karen,” said TarQwyn.

Gracie didn’t react the way Julie thought, or wished, she would when Gortenburg handed her over. “At first she wasn’t like, ‘Hey, there’s my person and I’m going to jump over into her arms,’” Julie said. “It took, I don’t know, 20 to 30 seconds for her to realize oh my gosh, I know you.”

By the time Mike joined them in the yard for the full family reunion, about a dozen neighbors were already there to meet Gracie. People drove by shouting, “Is that Gracie?!”

“We had been through so much in the last 10 days, you just couldn’t believe it culminated in victory,” said Mike.

Before they even took Gracie to the vet, they took her to see their friend, the dog-sitter.

“She had already heard so she just cried,” said Julie. “That was important to me, to give her some peace because I know she was just beside herself the whole time.”

When they got to the vet they found a Gracie poster on the door. The office manager, who had seen earlier online that Gracie was spotted at the bank nearby, had gone out on her break to search.

Except for some fur that needed serious brushing, Gracie was healthy.

“But the vet could definitely believe she had been in the storm sewers,” Mike said, “because she said, ‘I told my technicians to put some gloves on. I’m not sure where this dog has been, but I can smell her.’”

She got a bath at home, where it didn’t take long for Gracie to act “pretty normal,” said Julie. “She’s a really chill dog with us and that night it was just kinda like, ‘I’m home.’

“She didn’t seem traumatized. I think the only thing we noticed when we got her home, she couldn’t really bark ... like maybe she lost her voice.

“And then she’s notorious about jumping on the couch, and she couldn’t jump on the couch. It was like she didn’t have the strength to jump up on things. And it kind of took her, I don’t know, about a week or so before she could do that.”

The Hirons don’t have a clue how far Gracie traveled. She was found only three blocks from where she disappeared.

They laughed that people kept asking if Gracie had an Airtag tracking device.

She does now, and a GPS tracker.

“It definitely freaked us out the first night to know that she left the neighborhood, crossed Nall, was over at Starbucks and Chick-Fil-A, made her way back to the movie theater parking lot crossing Nall again, up towards the AMC headquarters… we had all these different sightings that people gave us,” said Mike.

“But in the end we didn’t find her that night. And then she appears at the Jewish Community Center the next morning and later we learn she made it to the Tomahawk Creek Condominiums. And then she goes missing, just goes unseen for nine days.”

“She could have just been hunkered down somewhere or just been walking aimlessly. It’s hard to know,” said Julie. “Lots of people are like, ‘Don’t you wish she had a GoPro?’ Or she could tell us where she was.

“And knowing that she was in that same general area near our old neighborhood made us think there were times when we just walked right beside her; she was just a little bit hidden.”

The couple spent New Year’s Eve thanking people. Mike drove around taking down all those Gracie signs.

“I will say this about Mike and Julie,” said TarQwyn. “They were diligent. And Julie was even sick during this. She had the flu. She was not well.

“People will call and ask if we can come out ... they don’t want to put in the work. We call them silver-platter people. But these were ideal clients. I have to be honest.

“They truly deserved to get that little dog back.”

Lisa Gutierrez

The Kansas City Star

816-562-6832

Lisa Gutierrez has been a reporter for The Kansas City Star since 2000. She learned journalism at the University of Kansas, her alma mater. She writes about pop culture, local celebrities, trends and life in the metro through its people. Oh, and dogs. You can reach her at lgutierrez@kcstar.com or follow her on Twitter - @LisaGinKC.