21/09/2025
What started out as a day at the swimming hole, turned into a 91 day adventure for Bayou.
This story about endurance, courage, heartbreak, exhaustion and exuberance is one for the books.
Bayou, a city dog was brought all the way from Los Angeles to Ojai for a day of hanging by the swimming hole, near Matilija Dam. His human grandparents live in Oak View but Bayou had never been to the dam before. He was with a Petsitter who was instructed to never take him off leash, he is newly adopted and a flight risk. Unfortunately, he was indeed let off leash and Bayou took the opportunity to run.
Bayou ran up the 33 freeway and down the 33 freeway and back up 33 freeway. He traversed up to 12 miles in one day. Joy, his owner slept in her car nearby for a few nights, but Bayou seemed to be too panicked to approach her. He would run by without even a sniff. He even ran by a few of our traps as if he had another mission.
Perplexed with how Bayou was moving and traveling, Scott and Joy picked up a bunch of trail cameras and began leaving them in areas he frequented. We had him running down the road, going up trails, traversing the riverbed. We worked hard to determine a pattern but just as we thought we had it, Bayou would play the disappearing dog card and seem to vanish for days. One time, he went missing for 5 days but we got reports of a lone dog barking in the wilderness, across the dam. He barked for hours, the fire department came out and looked with a drone, but we couldn't locate him and the terrain was "impassable" according to locals. We were distraught. Was he stuck? How will we find him? How will he survive?
Then, a miracle happened. Bayou made it from the dam to his neighborhood! This was almost 8 miles and remember, he had never been from the house in Oak View to the dam!
But Bayou NEVER went home. Scent items were placed but it seemed like his nose was broken!
Scott, Patty, and Joy longed for Bayou to come home. Superdad Scott just wanted him home so he could see his daughter's beautiful smile again.
Days and weeks and eventually months went by. Bayou avoided standard traps, he avoided houses where he could be contained, he avoided people and avoided cars. He began traveling only in the wee hours of the morning. We know because Scott would move cameras accordingly and he was caught between 1 am and 5 am on them. This made capture attempts near impossible as we had traps set and had to wait patiently in the van. Linda and Jenn slept in the van on many occasions!
He settled into an area East of the 33, on Arnaz Drive. Neighbors would hear the jingle of collar and tags and knew that he was there, drinking water. So many neighbors gave us access, whether to try traps or a larger kennel trap, or simply leaving him a place to get food and water regularly.
We racked our brains for a way to capture him. We of course wished we could tranquilize him or drug him but adrenaline is a funny thing and not having a way to locate him in this state would put him in extreme danger.
We built a large kennel trap and worked hard to condition him to it. Once we were sure he would go in, it was set. Justice made a trigger for the trap so no one needed to be near. He went in and for 10 seconds we were relieved, we thought he was safe. But then something horrible happened, the latch on the bottom of the gate, didn't latch. A true trap malfunction, even though it was tested multiple times!! And Bayou saw this as an opportunity and squeezed his body out. We cried, we threw our hands up asking, now what?? We were all crushed.
The next 4 weeks were agony waking up, reliving the malfunction in our head, our hearts and deep into the pits of our stomach.
Bayou's schedule became erratic, we got daytime sightings, and middle of the night sightings. Sightings from a mile away, to sightings four miles away. It almost felt personal, like he telepathically knew that we were devising a new plan to capture him! We were all discouraged and feeling if he didn't want to come home, he could live in the hills forever! The toll it was taking on all of us was pushing us to insanity. No one was sleeping, Scott, Patty and Joy were constantly moving cameras, leaving water bowls, cooking good food and dropping off new food, we just wanted it all to stop!! We even had locals moving kennel panels around in hopes of setting up another large enclosure trap. It was pure insanity.
Linda, who maps all these sightings had an extraordinarily hard job on this guy. We have almost 400 pin drops on the map. Just looking at it makes you dizzy! She also mapped the sightings of mountain lions and bears along Bayou's travels.
Just as we all were thinking, we cannot keep doing this daily, we cannot keep at this pace, we cannot have one more sleepless night, Joy got the best phone call she's ever had. Melissa had spotted Bayou in her yard, her entirely FENCED yard. And if you are from the area, you know this is few and far between. This was what we had dreamt of since the beginning. Melissa was calm...she was so cool, she walked over to her gate and shut it. She watched Bayou's face turn to oh no, I've been caught. Or maybe it was more of an oops, you caught me. Lol. Either way she sat down, talked softly to him and HE WALKED OVER TO HER. She talked sweetly to him and he let her grab onto the harness he had had on for 91 days. She led him into her office and offered up the couch. He took her up on the offer and jumped right up!
Joy was home from LA and they rushed over there. Tears flowing, Bayou whining, everyone was a mess. Bayou was safely in her arms. Bayou was also fat! We suspected that there were people other than us, who were feeding him. Tho many wanted to help by feeding, it actually hindered his capture and kept him from going into any of our traps.
We cannot express how truly overjoyed we are to not have to worry about him anymore. It does feel strange that we don't text with his family every morning, this became so much of our lives for 3 months. We thank everyone who gave us access to their property, who called in a sighting, and even those of you who chastised us for the number of posters that were up. The Oak View community is something special.
To Scott, Patty and Joy, you were truly amazing. Had you not been as involved, we would have 1/3 of those sightings. We are so grateful for you, your perseverance and cherish our friendship.
To Jenny K, thank you for jumping in and running around and checking cameras. Thank you for your amazing flyer campaigns and getting volunteers going door to door. Oak View is lucky to have you!!
To Bayou, you broke our hearts 100 times, you pushed our bodies to sheer exhaustion, you made us physically sick at times and made us cry more than we wanted to admit, but in the end we thank you for being such a smart, resourceful boy. Thank you for staying safe out there. Based on Linda's calculations, you travelled 154 miles but there were many hours and days you were not accounted for. So we are assuming that it was closer to 300 miles travelled.
A huge thank you goes to Melissa for your quick & calm thinking. You were what he needed. You were what we all needed!
Bayou now has a FI GPS collar though the family is keeping tight reins on him!
Welcome Home Bayou! We love you! Please no more adventures!!
Enjoy his video here. Grab your tissues
https://www.facebook.com/dogdayssar/videos/764450666215863/
