Dog missing in Colorado’s mountains for 43 days reunited with owner thanks to Summit Lost Pet Rescue

While making a cross-country move from New Jersey to California, Steven Maa made a stop in Summit County with plans to ski. He dropped his dog, Rocky, off at a pet sitter near Montezuma on Dec. 28, but shortly after he left, Rocky escaped his harness and ran away.

Maa and his girlfriend looked for Rocky for hours before finding out about and calling Summit Lost Pet Rescue for help. The nonprofit’s volunteer team went to work the next day, according to cofounder Brandon Ciullo, and per their usual protocol, set up cameras and a scent station, or a place near the point of escape with items that smell like the dog and Maa.

“Especially if it’s an unfamiliar area, a dog will come back, smell something that smells familiar, and then end up just staying in that particular area,” Ciullo said.

The next four days were very cold in the area the 10-year-old mutt went missing, he said, although he usually worries more about cars and wildlife than the elements threatening lost dogs. Volunteers kept searching the area for Rocky, and the group received two reports of sightings on Dec. 31. Maa saw Rocky that same day, but the dog barked at him and ran away.

“When a dog is in survival mode, if there’s not an actual scent trail leading from the dog to the owner, they don’t always recognize their owner because he can’t smell them,” Ciullo said.

The sightings gave Maa and his girlfriend some hope, he said, because it showed them that Rocky was surviving on his own.

“Up to that point, we had just been kind of devastated by the situation,” he said. “Worried about, ‘Wow, can he even survive one night?'”

There were no more sightings of Rocky for 39 days. Ciullo said that is the longest a dog that is eventually reunited with its owner has gone without being seen since he helped start Summit Lost Pet Rescue six years ago.

Maa said he and his girlfriend stayed in the area for a week or so before they had to continue on to Los Angeles for the first day of his new job. 

“Every day we got closer to that deadline, I don’t know, it just felt worse and worse,” he said. “Then obviously the day that we decided we did have to leave was truly tough on us.”

While Maa and his girlfriend were in Los Angeles, they did what they could to support the search in Colorado. He said they were in a group chat with pet rescue volunteers who would message every day about their search plans, and that gave him and his girlfriend hope that they would find Rocky.

About a week before Rocky was found, he said Ciullo called him to let him know the group would be winding down its search. Maa said he understood that the group has other lost animals to use its resources on and that after that long of Rocky not being seen, the likelihood of finding him was low. Maa said that experience was “tough.”

On Feb. 9, a woman who lived in Kansas called the rescue group because a security camera at her home near Montezuma had captured a dog standing on her porch. The group confirmed from the photo that it was Rocky, and Ciullo and other volunteers responded to the house.

Around 12:30 p.m., they had their equipment to set up a trap on-site. Ciullo said Rocky was not on the porch when they arrived, which was a good thing because they did not scare him away from the location. The group set up the trap on the porch, put some food in it, and dragged Maa’s clothes on the ground nearby to create a scent trail.

Ciullo and the volunteers went to Keystone to wait, and around 4:30 p.m. a camera alerted them that Rocky was in the trap, but he had stepped over the pressure plate, so the trap had not shut. The group drove back to the home to find Rocky sleeping on a blanket in the trap. Ciullo got out of the car and tried to approach Rocky, hoping the dog would set off the trap, the dog would decide to approach him or he would be able to set off the trap himself.

Rocky woke up as Ciullo approached, got out of the trap without setting it off, barked at Ciullo, and ran away. As the group reset the trap with peanut butter and set up an extra camera, he said they could hear Rocky howling in the woods.

“What broke our heart was that when a dog is dying, he comes very vocal and usually starts howling,” he said. “You can hear him in the woods just howling. And I’m like, ‘That’s Rocky. He is in pain.'”

The group left again, but as they drove toward Montezuma, they got a text that Rocky was back in the trap. He again had stepped over the pressure plate, though, so the group pulled off the road and waited. After a while, Rocky stepped on the plate and trapped himself.

Ciullo and the others returned and loaded Rocky into their truck around 7 p.m. He said Rocky had gone from 50 pounds to 28 pounds.

“Amazingly, he’s going to make a full recovery,” he said. “He was in great spirits, but he’s extremely skinny.”

Maa drove back to Summit County from California and was reunited with Rocky on Feb. 13.

The Summit County Animal Shelter and Buffalo Mountain Animal Hospital helped the rescue care for Rocky from when he was trapped to when he was reunited with Maa. Ciullo thanked them for their help.

“It definitely takes a village,” he said. “It’s more than just Melissa (Davis) and I, who started this six years ago. You know, we put in hundreds of hours for Rocky, so we just appreciate everybody’s support.”