678-725-1598 or 678-300-0792

Sam was trapped on December 14th after living on his own for several months. He was taken to Clayton County Animal Control, aka CCAC, to serve his legally required stray hold. By law, rescues cannot take ownership of a dog off the streets without involving animal control first. We (the rescue) went back to CCAC on December 15th to pay his fees in preparation of coming back to get him once able. Upon arrival, we were informed Sam escaped from the shelter within 10 minutes of arriving. He escaped out of their fence and bolted.

Call or text 678-725-1598 or 678-300-0792 to report location, date, and time seen. Pictures are great when possible.

Please do not chase, call, whistle, approach, or feed Sam. Please do not try to catch him, lure him in, etc.

Sam is being cared for and fed every day by his team. The reason for asking others to not feed is because we often need Sam to be hungry at certain times to align with capture efforts that day. It is impossible to reach every person every day and alert of plans for the day — so we asked everyone to not feed at all. His food is also often being placed in specific locations for specific reasons, even when we are not actively on site working, to get him accustom to eating certain places/things/etc. He is not being starved, promise!!!

Sam was just trapped. Not only was he just trapped, but then brought to a stressful shelter environment, escaped, and had to work to find a new “safe” place and food source. His guard is sky high. Sam will not go in anything even semi-believed to be enclosed. He will not consider any form of traps, fencing, or enclosures. Sam will not even go in a dog house, sit under a canopy, go near even a singular fence panel standing alone. Any form of enclosures are out of the question. Sam is also not food motivated. There is no way to control the amount of people spotting him and feeding. He has no reason to take any risks for food because he can easily wait it out for another food source that will undoubtedly come.

Some of the things we have tried include but are not limited to: missy traps, 20 feet long pens, slowly rebuilding traps or pens to get him use to it, female dogs in heat, underground traps, net mechanisms, so on and so forth. We have and are trying every possibility.

Tranquilizer dart guns are a very complex situation. Sedation does not take effect immediately. It can take as long as 5-10 minutes for a dog to drop once hit with the dart. The environment Sam is in makes for a challenging darting area. It is a busy car traffic area as well as several dense wooded locations. Once hit with a dart, the dog takes off running in panic. Sam is at risk to be hit by a car in this area at almost every turn. Sam is also at risk to take off towards the wooded areas and result in losing site of him. You cannot lose sight of the dog before sedation takes effect. If visibility was lost, Sam would be knocked out in the most vulnerable state in an unknown location. Tranquilizers also need to be reversed, which is impossible to do if sighting was lost. Another piece of the puzzle is that a licensed veterinarian needs to draw the drugs for the shot and reverse. It is not just the equipment (dart gun) and operator (shooter), but the veterinarian with the drugs Finding a veterinarian able and willing to do so is extremely challenging. Several following Sam’s story have asked about this, unfortunately though it is not an option right now. We have spoken with a slew of professionals from vets, wildlife sanctuaries versed in darting, Department of Natural Resources, Department of Agriculture, and more about this very topic over the last few weeks. The conclusion as of now and based on the current situation is that darting is not on the table. Should that change, we will revisit the conversations.

Sam will come directly into our care and rescue. He will not go back to the CCAC. Sam will be placed in a foster home under our rescue. He will remain in a foster home while receiving any necessarily medical treatment as well as routine vetting like neuter, vaccines, microchip, etc.