Lost dog rescued, reunited with owner in strange twist

Kent Lash hoped the owner of a dog he rescued Friday from Skunk Run would come forward quickly.

But a reunion came sooner than he imagined.

Lash, acting animal control officer for the Ottawa Police Department, got a surprise when he delivered the lost pooch to the Bea Martin Peck Animal Shelter: the dog’s owner — a shelter employee — was there waiting for him.

The dog tale began, owner Chasity Finch said, when her son went out to start her car Friday morning. Rocky, a 10-month-old sheltie that Finch adopted from the shelter, followed her son outside, as he often does, but didn’t come back afterward.

“We started looking and hollering for him,” Finch said. “But we couldn’t find him.”

After about an hour of searching, Finch said she had to go to work.

“I didn’t know what was going to happen to him,” she said. “But I figured that where I work, at the shelter, I’d find him.”

Rocky wandered a few blocks from home before finding his way into Skunk Run, a concrete drainage ditch that runs through City Park, past the Don Woodward Community Center on Third Street and continues to the Marais des Cygnes River on the east side of Ottawa.

Lash said he got a call about the dog at about 12:15 p.m. from someone at the East Central Kansas Economic Opportunity Corp. facility at Fifth and Poplar streets.

“The kids there had been talking to [the dog] all morning,” he said.

Rocky was stuck in a portion of Skunk Run that Lash said was about 10 feet deep.

“The walls were just steep enough that he couldn’t climb out,” he said.

Lash called Alex Jones, a maintenance worker at the police department, to get a ladder and help him rescue the dog.

“I didn’t want to get down in there and not have any way to get back out,” Lash said.

With Jones’ help, Lash was able to retrieve Rocky from the soggy, leaf-littered ditch.

“He’s happy to be out of there, I’ll tell you that,” Lash said at the scene.

With the rescue complete, Lash faced another challenge — the dog had a collar, but no tags.

“I’ll just have to take him to the shelter and hope somebody’s looking for him,” he said.

That, of course, is where he found a relieved Finch, reuniting owner and pet.

Lash said Rocky’s story ended happily but should serve as a reminder to Ottawa pet owners.

“It’s a good chance to encourage people to put tags on their dogs and make sure they’re registered with the city,” he said.

To register a pet with the City of Ottawa, owners must go to City Hall, 101 S. Hickory St. There, they will be required to present vaccination papers from a veterinarian for pets 6 months and older. Registration costs $10 or $5 for dogs that are spayed or neutered. For more information, call the city at (785) 229-3600.