Congratulations to Bernardo, his family and Alf for a safe return home in “Rio de Janeiro, Brazil”!

The DFD Found by Phone program is reaching areas we never dreamed of!  We extend special appreciation to Sherry, Dogs Finding Dogs, for her hard work on this case.  Brazil’s woods are very different than in North America.  There is a great deal of different foliage.

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One of the kids that live near the site where Alf was last seen called us on Saturday evening telling us that Alf was inside the bait-cage and that he was holding the cage’s door to make sure Alf did not escape. We drove there and found Alf a bit scared. He did not recognize me with the flashlight pointing at him, but as soon as I pointed the flashlight at me and reached out my arm so he could smell me.. oh boy was he happy!!  I have attached some pics that show the bait-cage and us.

We hired two different animal-trackers that tried different techniques to lure and catch him. For two days we almost had him!  I made sure we followed many of the techniques you explained, like changing location of the trap in relation to the last trap that did not work. We used rotisserie chicken as bait. We used the scent trail with a t-shirt of mine coming from two different directions. We did a scent trail with some cloths that had my other dog’s scent, coming from a water source nearby. We put a lot of grass and leaves on the bottom of the trap (but nothing on top of the cage).

Thank you so much for everything, Sherry. Your remote consulting helped us a lot.  You promptly answered every single question I had, so we were sure we were on the right track to catch Alf on Saturday (12 hours before some very heavy rain in Rio!)

Thanks again!
Bernardo