Dog Found in the BWCA

While it wasn’t JJ the star of my previous blog it was someone’s dog who was found in the BWCA. It’s still early in the summer so there will be plenty of campers heading out in the woods who can possibly find JJ. We’ll keep our fingers crossed JJ will be a lucky dog just like Tomah.

Minnetonka paddlers rescue Tomah the lost dog in the BWCA

Posted by: Curt Brown under People Updated: July 25, 2013 – 11:42 AM

An eight-day canoe trip in the Boundary Waters for five guys from Minnetonka High School turned into a successful mission to rescue Tomah, the lost Shetland Sheepdog.

The five teenagers, all cross-country runners from the Minnetonka area, were dropped off near Ely last week and decided to make Day 6 a rest day in Brule Lake before meeting one of the guy’s fathers at the pickup point near Grand Marais.

When they got to their island campsite on Night 5, 17-year-old Jonny Croskey said they saw a note scrawled with ash on a rock, saying “Lost dog, call DNR.” It didn’t take long before they saw the pooch popping his head up here and there. They tried chasing the dog, after all they are cross-country runners. But Tomah the Shelty was skittish and fleet of paw.

“So we explored and collected firewood and tried two or three times to flush it out, but every time we got close, it’d run off,” Croskey said.

So they went to sleep Monday night with the sound of Tomah barking and howling. The next morning, they spotted the small dog sprawled peacefully in a grove of trees. They moved in ever so slowly and grabbed him.

“He was really scared,” Croskey said. “We spent a day trying to catch him, so we made a harness out of rope because we were paranoid he’d get away from us again.”

With the dog in the canoe, they paddled on to meet Croskey’s dad, Tom, who drove them to the U.S. Forest Service ranger station in Tofte, where a sign with Tomah’s name and photo and owners’ phone number led to an eventual reunion with the dog’s owners. The guys had headed back to Minnetonka by then, but a phone call later confirmed how happy they were to get their Tomah back.

A voicemail message left to those owners was not immediately returned. Their lost-dog sign said Tomah had been gone since Saturday, meaning he’d been out on its own for three days.

Dogs in the Boundary Waters