She is a tiny white dog with short, stubby legs. She is 10 years old. And for more than a month, she survived alone in Yellowstone National Park.
Her name is Luna. And her story has a very happy ending.
But for a while, almost everyone thought she was gone for good.
A Door That Should Have Stayed Shut
Luna is a Jack Russell terrier and Chihuahua mix, according to USA TODAY and ABC News. Her family lives in California.
On September 10, they were visiting Yellowstone and staying in a cabin in the park’s Canyon Village area.
When they went out, they left Luna safely locked inside, with a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door.
It should have been the safest place in the park for her.
“Housekeeping made a mistake, opened the door, and Luna darted out into the park,” Norris Ark Training and Recovery Center said in a Facebook post.
Staff tried to catch her. They chased her for hours.
“The staff then proceeded to chase her around that area of the park for over two hours,” said Katie Boucher, who would later lead the rescue effort.
That was before the owners “came back and discovered all the chaos and their dog missing,” she said.
By then, Luna had vanished.
Todd Walton, director of marketing and sales at Yellowstone National Park Lodges, told ABC News it was an accident.
“It really was just a truly unfortunate accident that the dog escaped,” he said.
Alone in Bear Country
Yellowstone is huge. It covers about 3,500 square miles across Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
It is also home to grizzly bears, wolves and other predators. Not a place anyone wants a little 10-year-old dog wandering by herself.
Luna’s family stayed and searched for about another week before heading home to California, USA TODAY reported, citing SFGate.
They were told she had probably died, possibly killed by a coyote, Boucher recounted.
It’s hard to imagine driving home without her.
But days after they left the park, the family got news. Luna had been spotted.
They reached out to Boucher, president of Norris Ark Training and Recovery Center in Norris, Montana, just north of the park.
And the search for Luna began again.
The Dog Who Retraced Their Steps
Luna, it turned out, was a survivor.
She had spent her first year of life on the streets before she was adopted, Boucher said. Those instincts never left her.
Over the next weeks, people spotted her crossing intersections and strolling through employee housing.
She even slipped into lodges through their automatic doors.
And Boucher noticed something that will break your heart a little.
Luna seemed to be retracing her family’s steps from the day before she got lost. She kept sneaking into the eateries and lodges they had visited.
She was looking for them.
But catching her was another matter. When people called her name or chased her, it triggered her fight-or-flight response and drove her deeper into the park.
Norris Ark begged the public to hold back.
“Do not chase or follow her,” the group said. “She is in survival mode, and those efforts will drive her further into the back country.”
Time was running out, too. Campground and road access was set to close for the season on November 1, USA TODAY reported.
Norris Ark admitted the odds were not good. But they refused to give up.
“We will never abandon her. She is still alive until we have found her not alive,” the group wrote.
A Trap That Smelled Like Home
With permission from the National Park Service, rescuers set out a special live trap made for lost, scared dogs.
Boucher said the trap went out on October 4. On October 9, they added a little doghouse to it.
They didn’t bait it with food that might draw in bears or other wildlife.
Instead, they used scraps from a T-shirt and a pillowcase belonging to Luna’s family. Their scent.
A park construction crew told Boucher they kept seeing Luna in an area where a new road was being built. That’s where the trap was set.
Then came the call she’d been waiting for.
“I got a call about 3:30 yesterday afternoon that she had been seen all day long in the trap area,” Boucher told ABC News.
Luna had been “lying down next to it and just frequenting it, and was very comfortable,” she said.
“At that moment, I knew we were going to get her either today or tomorrow.”
Luna’s owner flew in from California.
On the morning of October 14, around 9 a.m., Boucher sent the owner out on foot to check the trap.
And there she was. Curled up inside, “sheltering in the little doghouse we placed there for her to use during the storm,” Boucher told USA TODAY.
“We shut the door and she was finally safe,” she said.
“Seeing that little nose peeking out of that doghouse is one of the moments in my life that I will never forget. Pure joy and relief. Answered prayers.”
Home Again
The park confirmed the good news to ABC News.
“The dog that was loose in the Canyon Village area has been captured and is alive and well,” a park representative said.
Luna was thinner. Boucher said her weight loss was about 10 pounds, and she had a few anomalies in her bloodwork.
But she was expected to make a full recovery.
“She’s underweight, but that’s to be expected. She’s alert and in good spirits,” Boucher said. “I was crying all the way up here from the park.”
How did a tiny senior dog make it through more than a month out there?
Boucher said the park has “many hiding places she could use to stay warm and safe from predators.” And, she added, “She is very fast.”
“More than anything, we’re just glad that this has a happy ending,” Walton said.
Boucher also had a message for every dog owner reading this.
“The primary thing we want people to understand is that Yellowstone is a very dangerous place, and to please leave their dogs at home,” she said.
“And the second thing we want people to know is that if their dog does escape them, even if it’s at home, do not chase after them and get a professional involved right away.”
Luna’s family has asked not to be identified. But it’s easy to picture the moment that little nose peeked out of that doghouse.
A month alone. Bears, wolves and freezing nights. And she just kept looking for her people.
She found them in the end. Or maybe they found her. Either way, Luna is going home.
