Local man helps find, return lost Laramie dog

Misha, a Sloughi or Arabian Greyhound, who grew up on the streets of Iraq, learned from an early age to hide from people, because dogs were often shot there. Even after being adopted by a loving couple and moving halfway around the world to Laramie, that fear of people remained, her owner Lora Becker said.

But when Misha escaped from her enclosure at the Laramie RV Park on Jan. 25, people became her only hope of survival. As a large team mobilized to find her and bring her home, a key part of that team was Cody resident Bill Dohse.

“Without  … their expertise, we never would have found Misha,” Becker said of Dohse and his company Find-911. 

Over the last five years, Dohse has made tracking down missing animals and people his life’s work. The thrill of reuniting family members — whether they be four-legged or two-legged — never gets old for him.

“It’s just an overwhelming feeling when you’re able to successfully reunite a family,” he said.  “It’s just really a good feeling, and I’m happy we can expedite this search process with our technological advancements and development of a tactical process.”

Dohse, a lifetime law enforcement officer, said he formed Find-911 five years ago in an effort to “bridge the gap between law enforcement, families and family support systems in missing person cases.” 

He said the company uses three basic assets — people, tactical drones and accompanying software, and scent-specific tracking dogs — to reduce search time for missing animals and people.

In Misha’s case, time was not on Dohse’s side.

The winter temperatures in Laramie were extreme, Becker said, reaching as low as -18 degrees at night. If Misha weren’t found soon, she might not survive. 

In the early days of Misha’s disappearance, Becker worked with Trisha Anderson of Salt Lake City volunteer organization Trusted Trappers, which specializes in reuniting owners with their lost dogs. After Misha had been missing for a week, Anderson recommended Becker reach out to Dohse for assistance. 

Dohse said that, after arriving in Laramie, he immediately deployed one of his canines to track down Misha’s scent. With temperatures too cold and severe to utilize their drones, Dohse and his team used the canine to track Misha for six miles.

“That gave us a direction of travel, and the next day we discovered Misha was going in the direction where Lora and her husband were building a home,” Dohse said. “So I said, ‘We’re going to leap-frog all the way to where your house is,’ and we skipped ahead 10 to 12 miles.”

Once near the house, Dohse deployed another canine who tracked Misha’s scent back towards Laramie. After 14 miles and several days of tracking, the hunt ended at a haystack that the dog indicated Misha may have slept in.

The haystack marked the end 

of the fourth day of searching for Misha, Dohse said, and he was about to begin a fifth when Becker received a call from Domino Construction whose three employees had spotted Misha.

Construction workers had seen signage Becker had posted about Misha, and recognized her, Dohse said.

“Trish with Trusted Trappers had really educated these folks on signage and what works and what doesn’t when it comes to finding a lost dog,” Dohse said. “And that’s what allowed them to be reunited with Misha.”

Misha was severely dehydrated and undernourished — losing over 20% of her 42-pound body weight — by the time she reunited with Becker on Feb. 12. But Becker said she was just happy to have her beloved pet back, and expressed appreciation for everyone involved in the search effort.

“They’re all heroes/heroines to us,” Becker said.

As for Dohse, he is continuing to reunite families, both two-legged and four-legged. And he is working with Amazon and other tech companies to develop software that will further shorten search times in cases like Misha’s.

“I started Find-911 five years ago to find a better path to help folks track down their missing loved ones,” Dohse said. “And I think we’ve found that path.”