A rescue dog was found in Metro Vancouver’s North Shore after being lost in the wilderness for 54 days, after an outpouring of support from the local community and concerted efforts from searchers.
Bami, a four-year-old rescue dog from Korea, was lost in late November near North Vancouver’s Lynn Valley Mall after it slipped away from owner Yohan Kim’s leash.
What followed was a two-month ordeal for Kim and his wife Yeni Ji, with Bami being sighted throughout the region and also slipping through traps set by rescuers.
Ji described Bami as a “one-person dog” that was attached to her — and when she became lost, it took the entire community to find her.
“She’s more than family to me … just as when she was missing, I felt that a part of me was missing,” Ji said.
Ji and Kim got local pet rescuers Petsearchers involved, and owner Parker Mills said he was cautious going into it, knowing that rescue dogs could be skittish.
But what he didn’t anticipate was a nearly two-month-long searching process, involving numerous sightings throughout the North Shore and failed attempts to triangulate Bami.
“Usually dogs, lost dogs, they make a routine eventually and that’s when we can really move in and set traps and catch them,” he told CBC’s On The Coast.
“But with Bami, she kept moving areas. So she would be seen in one spot, and she’d take in a forest, and then she would take a trail.”
Mills said there were a few sightings in the week after Bami went missing — as a number of North Shore residents captured the dog on video and reported any findings in a large WhatsApp group.
But when he got video of Bami heading up to Rice Lake in the Seymour Valley and then heading up a mountain, he knew the search would require patience.
“We knew when dogs go up a mountain, eventually they come down,” he said.
“They’re usually a lot quicker than Bami was. And she was up there for three weeks until we got our next sighting, which was … a hard wait.”
But even as Bami would be repeatedly sighted throughout the region — eluding rescuers’ traps along the way — Mills started noticing she was getting more and more thin and emaciated.
“Once we caught her, we kind of projected that she had about a week or two left before she, kind of, ran out of energy,” he said.
“Because she was covering so much ground still and and clearly getting super skinny, right? And so we were, kind of, under a time crunch as well.”
Eventually, last Friday night, Mills got a call that Bami was sighted near Kenneth Gordon Maplewood Elementary School.
He jumped into action and went there on Saturday morning, and finally sighted Bami for the first time with his own instruments.
It was when a thermal drone detected a tiny heat signature, which was Bami sleeping in a bush.
Ji and Kim then rushed to the scene, and Parker eventually decided to wake Bami up — which is when Ji called her name.
“Just like Parker predicted, she came to the direction where I was standing. I called her. She immediately recognized me and came to me,” the elated owner said.
Ji called the rescue a team effort, and Kim thanked Petsearchers and the North Shore community for the successful rescue.
“This experience reminded us how incredible a dog’s survivor instinct can be. Surviving for two months with very little food in the rainy winter forest feels most miraculous,” Kim said.
“To anyone going through through something similar, please do not give up. Hold on to the belief that you can find your pet.”
