Southwest Michigan Woman’s Christmas Wish Comes True | Local news

Anyone who thinks Christmas wishes don’t come true doesn’t know Jennifer Hysell from Coloma.

After suffering the death of his father earlier this year and almost giving up on finding his dog, Parker, who went missing in July, Hysell posted on his Facebook page: “It’s almost Christmas and I’ve never felt less Christmas of my life … After all I’ve lost, what have I to celebrate? There is only one thing that can prove me wrong. Bring my Parker Marker home.

Hysell, who now lives in Dallas, TX, posted her wish on December 10. Two days later, Hysell received good news that his 3-year-old, brindle-colored Mastiff had been found unharmed in South Haven.

“I am the most grateful person for my army of soldiers who won this war,” Hysell said.

The “war” to find Parker began shortly after his wandering on July 28 as Hysell visited his family in Bangor after his father’s death.

She posted missing signs for Parker in the Bangor area and posted the information on social media. In mid-November, she even returned to the Bangor-South Haven area in hopes of finding her dog after he was spotted near the M-140 freeway, south of Aylworth Avenue, but in vain.

“My heart is broken again. I have to go back to Texas again without my baby,” she posted on her Facebook page on November 20.

His complaint reached out to South Haven area rescue dog advocates who began a serious search for the lost dog. However, it turned out that those who saw Parker had a hard time trying to lock him up.

“No one could have him. He was afraid of everyone,” Hysell said.

A woman who works at a factory on Kalamazoo Street in South Haven discovered it the hard way.

She tried unsuccessfully to get Parker back outside the factory a month ago, but was unsuccessful.

On November 21, she posted on Facebook to Hysell, “I believe we just saw your dog outside our factory. He was very nervous and he was limping. He fled to the shore of the lake and j Tried to follow him in my car but couldn’t find him He was also here about a week ago in the same area but he got away.

Fortunately Parker hadn’t traveled too far. After being spotted near Haven Heating and Cooling on the M-140 motorway earlier in November, Jamie Jo Tamandl and several other dog rescue advocates began setting up traps behind Country House Furniture, putting food out. inside in the hope of attracting the finicky puppy. They also installed video cameras to help monitor Parker’s movements if it happened.

The traps, however, have proven ineffective. Parker ate the food placed near the traps, but then ran away. Because Parker weighed 75 pounds, Tamandl ended up bringing a “Missy Trap” to an area behind the store building. The Missy traps are named after a former puppy mill dog who was captured there after refusing to enter a conventional small trap, according to the Retrievers.org website.

“My husband built it,” said Tamandl, who works at Country House Furniture. “It looks like a big kennel. It has a pulley system for the door. We were hoping it would grab the steak off the hook.”

But, even though Parker entered the large kennel several times, he struggled to catch the bait of the hook.

It was then that another dog rescuer, Mary Humphrey of Wayland, got involved.

“I was following his story and saw the difficulty the rescue group had in getting Parker to grab the meat off the hook, which would shut the door for him,” Humphrey said. “I offered my ‘Raytripper’.”

The Raytripper can emit an invisible beam that goes from one side of the trap to the other.

“It’s battery powered,” Humphrey said. “There is a magnet that holds the door open from the battery power source on the Raytripper. When the dog breaks this beam while passing through it, the magnet releases when the beam is broken and the door quickly closes. “

With the Raytripper beam in place, Tamandl and other local animal rescuers, including Jennie Loyd from South Haven and Tammy Pierce Eisbrenner from Bangor, kept watch. Finally, in the early morning hours of Sunday, December 12, Parker finally took a bite of the hook and remained in the cage.

“We had moved the trap behind the building to the new senior service building,” Tamandl said. “One of the ladies we work with put game in Missy’s cage. That and the beam ended up doing the trick.”

Hysell was delighted to hear the news and immediately planned to travel with her husband, Rob, from Texas.

On Tuesday morning, in a phone interview en route to Michigan, Hysell said, “I can’t believe it. I’m going to see my baby thanks to an army of good people.”

Hysell reunited with her puppy late Tuesday afternoon at Jazzy’s Dog Grooming in Sodus.

Although Hysell offered a monetary reward to anyone who found Parker, Tamandl said she and other animal rescuers who helped locate and trap the dog were not interested in receiving the money. .

“We didn’t do this for a reward,” she said.