Please do not chase, follow, or call her name. https://www.gofundme.com/f/finding-bogey About Bogey:
Bogey is a 9 year old Redbone Coonhound Mix. She is tan with floppy brown ears and black/grey around her muzzle and eyes. She has a very short smooth coat. She weighed about 47 pounds at the time she went missing. She has long legs and a lean athletic build. Her appearance may have changed somewha
t since she first ran away, though most people who have gotten a good look at her report her as looking like her pictures. How You Can Help
Store Annie’s number in your phone so you can call immediately if you think you might have seen her. Talk to your neighbors, especially those who might not use social media. Ask them to store the number in their phones. Volunteer to pass out flyers in your neighborhood, at your church or other gathering place. Message us for a printable flyer. Ask your HOA to be kind and leave signs up in the neighborhood. People need to know where to call if they do see her! Regularly check your RING or other security cameras for her. Extend the boundary to include a bigger area than just the front door. Send us a private message if you regularly feed outdoor cats/wildlife or know of someone who does. Depending on your location, we may want to set up a camera near your feeding station. FAQs
Q. How long has Bogey been missing? A. Bogey went missing on June 11, 2021. Q. Where does Bogey live? Where/how did she get lost? Bogey went missing from her home on Piney Branch Road in Fairfax VA. When going out for a late-night potty, the buckle on her collar failed and the collar came off. Unfortunately, her GPS collar was being charged at the time. She ran off into the night to eat cicadas. Why are there signs all over Fairfax county? Where has Bogey been? Bogey has covered an extremely large territory. We have had sightings that were confirmed by a professionally trained scent dog that have ranged from Fairfax Station, Lorton, Springfield, and Fairfax Station to the campus of GMU. Some of her sightings include sunning herself in a field near Lake Mercer; standing in someone’s breezeway in Crosspointe; on the Fairfax County Parkway near Hooes Road; sniffing around homes off Henderson Road and Hampton Road. Running through a neighborhood near Lake Braddock, and on the campus of GMU. Her known territory runs east/west from the Accotink Trail in Springfield to Fountainhead Regional Park and north/south from Rt. 29 in Fairfax to Lorton Road. The area is roughly 80 square miles. For most of the winter, Bogey was roaming back and forth between Springfield and Fountainhead Regional Park. More recent sightings have been closer to home including Burke, Lake Braddock, King's Park West and GMU. How did Bogey get all the way down to Lorton? We don’t know exactly how she got so far away. Our best guess is that a well-meaning person picked her up and brought her to the Lorton area thinking they would take her to a vet or shelter but she ran away from them. Have you contacted the shelter? Bogey’s owner Annie is a volunteer at the Fairfax County Animal Shelter. They were notified immediately as were all the local shelters. Most of Team Bogey also volunteers at the FCAS. Who is helping to search for Bogey? Bogey has an awesome team of people working to help bring her home. Team Bogey is comprised of professional trackers, shelter and rescue volunteers, friends, and neighbors. We have even had several of our followers become active members of Team Bogey! Is Bogey friendly? Will she come if called? In her normal life, Bogey is friendly to people but can be reactive to dogs she does not know. Since she has been missing, she has been avoiding people. Everyone who has seen her says she has turned and gone into the woods whenever she has been spotted. We ask that you do NOT try to call out to her if you see her. The best thing to do is sit down, look away and crinkle a treat bag. If she is going to approach someone, it needs to be on her terms and that person will need to be VERY patient! There is a great video on "calming signals" on the website for the Missing Animal Response Network. Why is she so skittish? We do not know for certain what Bogey has gone through on this journey. It is quite possible that she went through something traumatic, such as being chased, that has caused her to avoid people. Many lost dogs go into survival mode and become feral within just a few days of being lost. To learn more about lost dog behavior, visit the Missing Animal Response Network
Q. Does Bogey like other dogs? Bogey had a bad experience at a dog park when she was young. She doesn't like to be approached by unknown dogs and is unlikely to come to another dog that she does not know. Where was the last sighting? We prefer that people not focus just on the last sighting as Bogey moves around a lot! We know that Bogey has moved as much as 4 miles in a single night. We must keep watch in all the areas where she has been because she could return at any time. Unfortunately, we have not had enough sightings to establish a pattern to her travels. How is she surviving? What is she eating? There is a surprising amount of food available to a dog as resourceful as Bogey. Lots of people feed wildlife or outdoor cats. She has been known to eat birdseed, horse or deer p**p. She has also been tracked going through neighborhoods on trash day. One person that saw her reported that she had something in her mouth that looked like a squirrel. Has anyone gotten a picture of her? So far no one has been quick enough to get a picture of Bogey. Many sightings were reported by people who were driving when they saw her. Others just saw a tan dog run into the woods. She has quickly run from anyone who has made eye contact or tried to call out to her. What do you mean by a "confirmed sighting." How do you know it was really her? When we get a sighting in a new area, we will bring out a tracker team with professionally trained scent dogs. If the tracking dog picks up Bogey's scent in the spot where someone reported seeing a tan dog running loose, then we feel confident enough in the sighting to label it "confirmed". What do the trackers do? Why have they not found Bogey? Trackers have dogs that are specially trained to follow the scent of a specific animal. They can help us to confirm if a sighting was Bogey, can follow her path and tell us where her scent is strong. Afterwards, we set up cameras with the goal of eventually setting a humane trap. It is rare for a tracker to actually see a lost dog. Only about 5% of tracks result in a "walk up sighting" where they actually see the animal during the track. They are usually starting a day or more behind, so for a dog who moves as much as Bogey does, it is unlikely that the tracker dog will catch up to her. If the tracker feels they are getting close, they will usually have to stop. Animals can sense when they are being followed and the trackers do not want to "push" a lost animal out of a safe place and into a busy road! Why don’t you want people to go out and look for her? Why don’t you give out specific sighting locations? When we get a sighting or track Bogey to a specific area, we set up trail cameras with the goal of eventually setting a humane trap. Extra people walking through the woods looking for her would be more likely to drive her away from our cameras thus delaying the process. Worse, she could be scared out of a safe area and into a busy road. We want to keep her safe! Have you set a humane trap? Trapping Bogey is one possible strategy. We have not been able to do so because she has not stayed in one area long enough to get her on camera. We cannot just set random traps in an area as large as Bogey's or we would trap fox, raccoons and other wildlife all night long. Have you considered using a drone? Team Bogey has explored the possibility of using drones with thermal imaging technology. We spoke to several drone operators in the past who were not hopeful. The majority of Bogey's territory is in restricted flight zones. We had a search and rescue drone operator apply for an exemption, but the FAA would not give approval to search for a dog. Without FAA approval, drones need to be within eyesight off the operator, so we would not be able to cover much of an area.
