Posted on 11/09/2019 7:59:13 AM PST by luv2ski
The frantic search for a missing 2-year-old girl lost in the Oregon wilderness had a happy ending after the toddler was found safe by a woman on horseback and her dog. Tammy Stevens, 59, of Beaverton, was out for a ride Thursday morning with her horse, Bo, and her dogs, Wilson and Maddie, miniature Australian Shepherds, when she joined the search for the missing girl, according to Sgt. Marcus Mendoza, a spokesman for the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office. Little Iris Nix was walking with her grandmother on a trail in the Molalla River Recreation Area when she ran ahead and out of sight, Mendoza said. He said as Stevens scouted terrain she described as steep and dangerous, she heard a child crying. “I said to Wilson, ‘Go get her and show me the way,’” Stevens said in a recorded interview with a deputy. “Wilson was climbing for her so I tied Bo up and then climbed up, really steep, super steep, about 70 feet and there she was,” she said. “She was pretty upset.” Iris was out for a walk with her grandmother Gayla Ann Jay, 62, of Molalla, and a sibling, when she disappeared. Her grandmother looked for 15 minutes and then summoned help from loggers passing by. "Yeah, 15 minutes I could tolerate. After 15 minutes I started to lose it," Gayla told Fox 12 Oregon. Iris was lost in the wood for about two hours. “It was a really good story,” Stevens said. “I’m so thankful.”
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
A two year old in the woods? How could she get lost when grandma never let her out of her sight? Right grandma? You never took your eyes off her?
One word solution: LEASH
For the kid and dogs
That was something that was mentioned in a tracking class I took. Small children will instinctively go upward, where grownups are more likely to go downhill. Something about the way the body’s posture and center of balance change as a person grows.
If anybody could find the child, it would be the Australian Shepherds. Those are some smart dogs.
I am thinking that the toddler was in an area that was ABOVE the trail the woman and her dogs were on, I don’t think the toddler climbed there possibly trails on different levels!!!
There are some occasions where some toddlers, for a number of good reasons, should be on a leash. It can be a long one or a short one, as needed, but it sould be secured in a way they cannot detach it. I used to think this looked cruel, but I quit thinking that way. Safety first. The kid will get used to it and later on, as they get older, they will not look back on it with trauma. In most cases they’ll barely remember it.
“A toddler climbed up a 70-foot steep incline? Something about this seems odd. I wish the story had more detail.”
It does not mean the kid climbed up there. That point was simply where the kid was from the point of where the woman who found her was. For the kid, it may not have been an uphill climb at all during her own walk to that point.
Yep. Missing 411 is some weird creepy stuff.
Aussy Shepherds probably tried to herd the little girl. But herding a female 2 year old toddler is one hell of a difficult task.
You have never been around toddlers, right? They are FAST, they are fearless and they are super curious about their world.
When I was two I climbed completely to the top of my grandfathers old antebellum home
It was a basement and two floors of high ceilings and a typical for that era gabled roof with attics and dormers
At least 70 feet
The men who were in the family contracting business and who were working on the roof and had known me since birth two years earlier rushed over and one scooped me up from the landing where I was tottering over the brick drive
Not the first time a black man saved me from death or serious injury
Poor dog. Whatever works, I guess.
Brandy’s Story: Just an Old Golden Retriever
I grew up in your average middle-class Jewish home where pets were not available. I never had a pet. There was a lot of plastic on the furniture. Basically, pets were considered dirty, unwanted things. Animals were not part of my experience, so I had not conscience about them.
I got married in 1968, and in 1970 I had a baby. When he was 18 months old, we were living in a bungalow colony in upstate New York while waiting for our home to be built. An elderly woman and her old golden retriever lived next door. I used to see them together when the woman was outside gardening. My son liked the dog, and she was a friendly animal, but that was all as far as I was concerned.
When the woman died, her relatives came up, and they emptied her house of her treasures, her clothing, anything they thought of value. They contacted a real estate agent who put out a For Sale sign on her property. Then they locked the dog out and drove away.
Because I’d grown up with no conscience about animals, it didn’t even cross my mind to say, “Wait a minute. Someone should be taking care of this dog” or “who is going to be responsible for her?” It just didn’t. I was not responsible for the dog.
Some of the neighbors mentioned that they’d feed her occasionally, but the dog mostly stayed near the house where she’d lived, where her owner had died. When the dog would come over to play with my son, Adam, he would feed her cookies; once in a while I would give her some leftovers.
One afternoon I went to get Adam, who’d been outside playing in our yard—a safe, level grassy area—and he was gone. Just gone. I was frantic. I looked for him, and then neighbors helped me look for him. We called the police. For three hours the police looked for him, then they called the state police. The state police brought in helicopters. My husband rushed home form the city. I was hysterical. We could not find Adam. We didn’t know if he’d been abducted. We didn’t know if he was alive. We could not find him.
The search had been going on for six hours when a neighbor, who’d just returned home, said, “Where’s Brandy?”
Brandy? The dog? Why was he asking about the dog?
Someone else said, “Maybe he’s with Adam.”
What did I know about animals? I said, “Why would she be with Adam? What does that mean?”
One of the troopers recalled that he’d heard a dog barking deep in the woods when they were doing the foot search. And suddenly everybody started to yell “Brandy!” including me.
We heard faint barking and followed the sound.
We found my 18-month-old son, standing up, fast asleep, pressed against the trunk of a tree. Brandy was holding him there with one shoulder. One of her legs was hanging over a 35-foot drop to a stream below.
She must have followed Adam when he wandered off, just as a dog will with a child, and she saw danger. She was a better mother than I; she’d pushed him out of harm’s way – and held him there. This was an old dog. Adam was an 18-month-old child. He struggled, I’m sure, but she’d held him there for all those hours. When I picked him up, she collapsed.
As the trooper carried my son back home, I, sobbing with relief, carried Brandy. I knew in that instant that she was coming home with me, too. Brandy spent the rest of her life with us, and I loved her completely; she lived to be 17 years old.
From then on, I made it a point to learn everything I could about animals. My focus at the time was old golden retrievers. Obviously, I thought they were the smartest, the best, and there was nothing like them. I started the first golden retriever rescue and have had as many as 35 of them in the house at a time, and it mushroomed from there.
Because of Brandy, I have a calling. I have a reason to get up in the morning. Because of Brandy, thousands of unwanted animals have been given safe lives. I can’t save them all, but I can make a difference. We now have 300 animals—all kinds, including birds and pot-bellied pigs—and are a well-recognized humane animal sanctuary. We take the animals that other shelters won’t take—the ones my mother would have said were dirty; the old ones who are incontinent, the blind, the ugly ones; they’re all beautiful to me. So many organizations feel it’s easier to euthanize these animals. I don’t agree. How could I? If someone had put an abandoned 11-year-old golden retriever to sleep 29 years ago, I would not have a child. I wouldn’t have a son who is the light of my life.
I thought the same. Maybe she fell from a higher trail where it forked earlier? Good dogs for finding her!
Yes I have five kids. Which is why I would never let a toddler out of my site -- literally -- especially in the woods. So when that "fast" toddler ran into the woods I would have been hot on her heals as she fled. I am fairly certain that in this case grandma turned her back for a moment.
Children instinctively climb up to avoid predators.
Adults are often trained (or absorb the knowledge) to descend to find a stream, which can then be followed to find what passes for civilization.
Sure does!
Crackers? I never did anything like that. When I was that age I got on the countertops to get chocolate chip cookies.
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