For Susan and Brian Hartman, it was a dog owner’s worst fear.
Poppy, their nine-month-old English springer spaniel, spotted a deer after she’d been let outside into the yard on a sleeting March night in 2019. Canine instinct took over, and Poppy took off after the animal.
Brian Hartman got in the car to find her before she went too far, and located her a few houses away. Hopefully Poppy would just come back, and they could all go back inside the house on this cold night.
That’s when the fear turned into a nightmare. The automatic headlights on the car switched off. That flickering in the dark was enough to spook Poppy, and she bolted away through the yard, which backs Route 550 on the way to Stormstown from the Carson’s Corner intersection, into the darkness of the night.
Over the next 15 days, the Hartmans searched for their dog with volunteers in person and online who were mobilized through Pet Recovery of Centre County, a community group on Facebook. With this help, the Hartmans navigated the emotional toll of losing their pet, followed up on sightings, and used equipment to search. There was even a near-rescue after eleven days, on Interstate 99. They eventually got her—alive but injured and covered in ticks—after another sighting on the interstate four days later.
Through the Pet Recovery Facebook group, the three women who run it have made a mission to help owners find their pets, and help pets that were found find their owners. At their disposal are a host of resources and supplies and the support of the thousands of people who see the social media posts each day.
“We would not have been able to do this without the ladies from Pet Recovery,” says Hartman. “They are compassionate, reassuring and calm. “The State College community and the amount of people who got invested in Poppy’s story was amazing.”
‘A need for this’
Pet Recovery got its start 10 years ago, shortly after a large community response to find a Saint Bernard who was lost in the Snow Shoe area. The dog, Big Ben, is the profile picture of the group on Facebook. The cover photo is of a German shepherd named Wolf who vanished in the snow.
Today, Pet Recovery has amassed 26,000 followers on Facebook and alerts its audience to missing and found animals primarily in Centre County as well as in parts of Clearfield and Clinton counties.
“A group of moms who united trying to save a lost dog became friends and realized there was a need for this,” says Jodie Yarger, of Houtzdale in Clearfield County, one of the three women who run the group. “All animals deserve to be saved if we can. We know we can. That’s our focus.”
The two others who run Pet Recovery are Susan Harpster and Bridget Genua.
There are constant updates on the Pet Recovery feed. On a single day recently, there were the followings posts: a dog was found in the Stearns Crossing development in Houserville; a dog found on Upper Georges Valley Road near Spring Mills found its owner; a cat turned up at the Sheetz on Vairo Boulevard in Patton Township; a kitten was found in Milesburg; a dog was located on Beech Creek Mountain in Clinton County; and a cat went missing from Southgate Drive in State College.
“I would be shocked if we woke up in the morning and we didn’t have a message about an animal,” Yarger says.
When asked how many animals they have found, Yarger says it’s impossible to track because of the sheer volume of requests, messages and posts.
Thanks to donations and purchases they’ve made out of pocket, the group has animal traps in all shapes and sizes, cellular video cameras and trail cameras. When someone reports a missing pet, the group sends guidelines that have been put together from the years of experience they have gained. One tip: place dirty laundry that smells like the owners outside to see if the scent attracts the animals back home.
Offline, the women meet with anguished owners, help them print fliers and search when time allows. The pet owners interviewed for this story were all especially grateful for the hours the women put in.
“We work really hard to try to give people—even if it’s not the outcome everyone wanted—closure,” Yarger says.
Rosie, the golden retriever rescue
Closure is what Jenny Lichty and her husband wanted after months of searching for their dog Rosie, a golden retriever who was a rescue from a puppy mill.
Rosie lived in a cage in the mill and was skittish when she was adopted by the Lichtys. It took a few years, but Rosie grew calm.
She was terrified of thunderstorms, though, and a distant clap of thunder is what spooked her on an August day in 2018.
The couple had just had their second baby, and Jenny’s exhausted husband let Rosie outside of their home in Patton Township. When they realized Rosie wasn’t on her leash, it was too late—she was gone.
Lichty immediately contacted Pet Recovery, and the help and support streamed in. She made fliers and posted them all over town, and even on her car. The Lichtys and volunteers combed through fields, climbed hillsides and waded through creeks. The couple sent up drones, set traps and put laundry out to see if the scent would bring her back. They even followed a lead from a psychic’s vision that the dog was in Julian. Nothing worked.
“The community got so involved in the search, which was utterly astonishing to me,” Lichty says. “I would not have been able to do ninety percent of those things they did. Their personalities were so caring. They didn’t judge me and our family for messing up.”
The fall and winter went by without any sightings, and the Lichtys had no idea where to focus their search. They came to accept that Rosie probably wasn’t coming home.
Out of the blue, the following April, the family got a call from someone who found Rosie’s remains, along with her collar and ID tag, in a field about a half mile away from their house. Within a few hours of the Lichtys getting Rosie’s remains, the women from Pet Recovery came with flowers and their condolences.
“While the outcome wasn’t what anyone had hoped for, their dedication, kindness, professionalism and tenacity helped me in more ways than I can describe,” Lichty says. “They are the best group of people and selflessly help so many in the community and surrounding areas. They are the ultimate pet lovers.”
Oaks, the tabby cat
Pet Recovery helped with the capture of Oaks, a gray tabby cat that Sierra and John Keller got for their son, Jack. The parents wanted to get the cat acclimated to the outdoors when they took him for a walk on an unseasonably warm day in February this year in Patton Woods. A gust of wind blowing through the trees startled Oaks, and he wriggled out of his harness and scampered away.
“It was really heart-wrenching for our family,” says Sierra Keller, noting that Pet Recovery’s Susan Harpster “was a text away the entire time.”
The Kellers used the group’s trail cameras and motion-activated night cameras. While they saw wildlife, unfortunately they did not see Oaks.
“In those days, we were looking day and night,” says Jack.
On the eleventh day after Oaks went missing, Sierra Keller got a promising message from someone on NextDoor, a social media app, about a gray tabby cat that could be Oaks.
By the time the Kellers visited the location of the sighting, the cat was gone. Hoping to keep the cat around or lure it back, the Kellers put out some food and returned the next day to set up a trap and wait.
While Jack was in school that next day, the cat entered the trap. Pet Recovery scanned the cat to see if it was microchipped, and it was. It was Oaks, who soon was reunited with Jack.
“Oaks waltzed right into this house like he had never left,” Keller says.
Poppy, the English springer spaniel
It seems like a miracle that Poppy is back home today with the Hartmans after being missing for 15 days.
There had been sightings of Poppy in the days after she first went missing, but the efforts heated up when Susan Hartman got a call at 5:30 one morning from Pet Recovery’s Susan Harpster that a dog was hit on I-99, near where the old Matternville school is.
Several drivers had stopped, and one of them suggested the black and white dog could be Poppy, who by now had been all over Pet Recovery’s feed. When one of the good Samaritans approached Poppy, she got scared and ran off again.
Four days later, the Hartmans got reports that Poppy was crossing back and forth over I-99 near where she was struck. Some drivers stopped to help. When the Hartmans got there, they could see the dog in a gully below the interstate, near Sellers Lane. They were hoping they’d be able to get close enough to call for Poppy, who they could see was limping.
The Hartmans and the people who had stopped on the interstate split into two groups. Some would stay on the highway, while the rest made their way off it to get closer to Poppy. They’d try to herd her and prevent her from going back to the interstate.
Brian Hartman eventually got close enough that Poppy might be able to hear him, even though she was on the other side of a chain-link fence. “Hey, Poppy Pop,” he called out to her.
It worked. There were no flickering automatic headlights like the ones that scared her away the first time. Poppy stopped and sat down, and he secured the dog through the fence. Finally, it was over.
Poppy didn’t escape injury. She had a broken leg, likely from being hit on I-99 a few days before, and that required surgery. In her stomach were bones from creatures she had eaten while trying to survive.
Back home today, an invisible fence keeps Poppy from escaping again.
“The story of Poppy’s homecoming could not be told without everybody at Pet Recovery and the community,” Hartman says. “The resources they were expending emotionally and practically to find Poppy were amazing. When we would have our lowest moments, they were there to reassure us.” T&G
Mike Dawson is a freelance writer who lives in College Township.
