A New Year's Tale With A Tail-Wagging Ending

Miriam Herz and Otis in dated photo. (Photo courtesy of Miriam Herz)

By Soren Wuerth

TNews Editor

Waking up in a small, remote Nicaraguan village, Miriam Herz found a distressing message on her phone.

Otis was missing.

A friend told her Otis, a year-and-a-half old Bernese Mountain Dog, had escaped during his hand off to a friend's house in Girdwood. 

To make matters worse, Herz had no cell phone service. "I was at the whims of wi-fi," she said. 

"I saw he ran off. and they were going to give me an update and I never got one," she said during a phone interview. 

Little did she know, the 3 a.m. text (Alaska time) would start a 12-day mission to locate Otis and end with his rescue from a ravine beneath Chair 4 at Alyeska Resort. 

Meanwhile, her friend, Elle, awake at 3:30 a.m., frantically searched the community for the missing dog to no avail. They reported she and others would resume the search at 7 a.m. the next day.

"He didn't make it inside before he bolted," Herz, 27, said. "He doesn't do great with change and this is the longest I've been away from him."

Otis has never liked men, she said. "Our theory is that Elle's partner scared him."

Otis in a photo before he became lost. (Photo by Miriam Herz)

The Search

A team quickly mobilized. 

Microchiped, Otis could be identified, but first he had to be found. 

Merc called vets and changed her voicemail. Friends made flyers and put the word out on social media channels. 

"It escalated to leaving scent stations," said Herz, who is a grad student working on her doctorate. 

The team gathered blankets and Herz's clothing and set up "game stations" with smelly food. "We even set out heated dog bowls," she said. Friends drove her car from Anchorage and left the trunk open, hoping Otis would smell his familiar companion and hop in. No luck.

Days went by. Nothing.

There were two sightings that offered hope:  "someone claimed to see Otis by a dumpster on Crystal Mountain Road," she said. "It's hard to know if that was actually Otis. The other potential sighting, two or three days later, saw Otis traveling northbound."

Now, a new fear. Otis could have been running toward his South Anchorage home.

"So then the entire plan of action shifted with potential knowledge of him traveling to Anchorage and I notified friends and family (in Anchorage)," she said.

A friend set up game cameras around Herz's house and her team now put flyers around Anchorage. "His risk goes up significantly," she said.

"Then we didn't hear anything for a really long time," she said. "I didn't know what to think. I was experiencing significant emotional distress. I was worried."

Though Herz was getting frequent updates, there was little she could do. A grad student, she was on vacation before resuming her studies. She considered flying back. 

"I struggled with the thought of coming home a lot. My presence at home would have been worse and nothing would have necessarily changed," Herz said. "And would've been a huge financial burden."

Southcentral Alaska, meanwhile, had been experiencing a brutal cold snap with temperatures dipping into negative numbers.

Otis,, 20 pounds lighter, is hauled from the ravine below Chair 4. (Photo courtesy of Miriam Herz)

Rescue:  "100% Otis"

Twelve days had passed, when, on Dec. 29, a man and son thought they spotted a dog while riding up Alyeska Resort's Chair 4, according to Herz. Meanwhile, a ski patroller working on the mountain thought he heard barks.

Otis is not a barker, ordinarily, said Herz, "unless he needs something."

"He loves the snow and being outside. I'll let him outside and he'll bark when he comes back in," she said. Now, she deciphered the random barks as Otis saying, "Please come get me. I'm here. Please come save me!" she said.

Another patroller, Rachel Peterson, who is also a friend of Herz, was riding up Chair 4 when she saw a dog in the canyon below,according to Bayne Salmon, Alyeska's mountain communications manager.

"She literally saw him by some miracle," Salmon said.

Peterson, who knows Otis, told Herz, "It is 100% Otis...he wagged his tail at me."

Patrollers quickly assembled a team of five patrollers, including Peterson, and moved into action, Salmon said.

Though there have been winter dog rescues on the mountain (canines aren't allowed), dogs have been rescued in the summer, he said.

The group went to the canyon's exit, where, below a more than 40-foot drop, they saw Otis, according to Salmon.

Salmon said, "after quite a bit of coaxing with treats" they attached "a pretty cold Otis" to a harness and Peterson hoisted him up a frozen waterfall. 

Once free of the canyon, they tried to put him in a toboggan to get him down the mountain, Otis would have nothing to do with the sled.

"So (Peterson) walked him down to the aid room "where they got water, a warm up and a lot of enthusiasm from his caregivers," Salmon said.

Salmon said Otis had likely been trapped for days in a cleft that is "a nightmare to get out" and that he may have entered the canyon for its relative warmth in freezing temperatures. 

No one knows how long Otis was stuck in the ravine, but he was emaciated. Friends rushed him to a Pet ER where a vet found he had lost 20 pounds. 

Herz looks forward to returning to Alaska to see her furry friend. 

She said intermittent reports from afar caused her to lose sleep and suffer "an emotional rollercoaster" of hope and despair.

She kept asking herself, "what if he's trapped in a home that's being worked on... it was so cold out, but luckily he's a Burmese Mountain Dog." And she thought, "the lack of food. I don't know if he's going to continue to survive. I'm so happy he did."

Herz said she called a friend who is now taking care of a safe-and-sound Otis. 

"While I was talking he perked up," she said.

Asked how she celebrated, Herz said, "with a lot of sleeping."

Otis in the canyon where he was found, possibly trapped for days in frigid temperatures. (Photo courtesy of Miriam Herz)