Louisa Chiaramonte has a large family of fur babies. She has five rescue dogs she brought back from Belize, and they are her world.
She lives on a property near Hutcheson Beach in Huntsville, and recently, while on a Peter’s Players boat cruise, her dogs were having an entirely different adventure.
The dogs were left in the care of a young girl who walks the dogs regularly. On that afternoon, she had just returned from a walk with the dogs when a deer ran by, and the dogs bolted after it.
“You know the dogs, they’re all from Belize, they’ve all spent most of their life in the jungle, and they’ve got a pretty strong hunting instinct, and they saw the deer and they all just bolted on her. She was alone, and they were just faster than she was,” said Chiaramonte. In the end, of the five, three made their way back home safely, but two were still missing by the time Chiaramonte returned from Gravenhurst.
Her friend, Heather Cassie, the dog sitter’s mom, and Chiaramonte spent hours calling for the dogs and searching for them. Cassie also posted on Facebook about the missing dogs and asked anyone with information to get in touch.
Chiaramonte said she was out of her mind, worried that she would never see them again. She lost her son to suicide five years ago in Belize, where the family has a farm, and said the love and companionship of her dogs have helped her get through a very difficult time in her life.
Meanwhile, the dogs ended up running onto the Kimberly-Clark property, where they fell into a deep basin. While the basin had apparently been recently partially drained, which helped, the dogs could not get any traction and kept slipping as they tried to get out.
“Apparently, they were in there for quite some time, treading water until security, I believe it was a security guard, noticed it on a camera and noticed them struggling for their lives, and they had to do a dramatic rescue,” explained Chiaramonte. “I think they laid a series of carpets down the side of the basin so they could gain some traction, and the dogs were so exhausted from the length of time they had been in there struggling to survive, I guess they couldn’t even make it home that night.”
She said the dogs had gotten away at about 4:30 in the afternoon on Saturday, June 14, and were discovered and rescued from the basin at approximately 7 p.m. It is not clear how many people were involved in the rescue, but the dogs did not return home until approximately 7 a.m. the next morning. “Apparently, they were too exhausted to make the small trek home,” said Chiaramonte. Instead, the dogs found a spot on the property and stayed huddled there until morning before making their way home at dawn.
Chiaramonte said she learned of the ordeal the dogs had gone through hours after they returned home from Eric Ducharme, the KC employee who had rescued the dogs. He reached out to her friend Heather Cassie after seeing her post on Facebook to tell her what had happened.
Chiaramonte is grateful for the efforts of Ducharme, who rescued her dogs from drowning in the basin. “I’m eternally grateful,” she said, her voice breaking. “It was like I lost my child all over again that night, especially Miko. Miko was a dog I got after my son died, and I named him after my son. I can’t even imagine what would be going on in my life and my world right now if I didn’t have my dogs back.”
The morning of their return, she was about to go searching for them again when she spotted them on her front porch. “There they were on the front porch, reeking; they just smelled horrible. You could tell that they were wet to the bone, and they came in and they just slept for days,” she said. “I could tell that Miko, particularly, the larger dog, was extremely traumatized. You could see it in his face, and he would not close his eyes to sleep unless I lay next to him. I could tell that he was traumatized because his eyes followed me no matter where I went, but he was too exhausted to move, and just couldn’t sleep unless I was with him. It was really obvious that they really went through something, even before we knew what they went through,” said Chiaramonte, relieved and thankful to have her fur babies home.
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What a Good News Story ! I am so happy the two made it home.
As an owner of two border collie rescue dogs, Daisy and Chloe I can only imagine the feelings that were experienced when your dogs were gone, and then when they out of blue appeared on your doorstep.
Thank goodness the Kimberly Clarke employee noticed them. Even though the dogs shouldn’t have been on KC property it might be advisable for them to install a security fence around the site. Also even with the 5 darlings in my opinion you need to keep them on leashes while walking, especially on public land. We have many wild critters in Muskoka to be of chasing interests to our dear loving doggies.
Glad their home , safe, sound and everyone is happy all around. 😊👍
John Earl. Maple View Farm