Update on the Dog Who Survived in the Mountains Next Her Deceased Owner

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By the onset of fall, Bill Milner knew Rich and Finney weren’t coming back. Human beings and dogs haven’t evolved to survive for that long high on the slopes of a peak, he figured. He assumed a hunter following the deer herds would find them somewhere on the mountain. “That’s what I hoped for, anyway,” Milner says. “Just to have some closure for Dana.”

That’s precisely what happened on October 30. Officer Robert Hill was in the sheriff’s office when a message came through from a Garmin InReach that afternoon. The message, from a hunter on horseback, said he had found a body and a dog on a wooded ridge on Blackhead Peak.

“We figured he meant the dog was dead too,” Hill says.

Reception is poor on the eastern slope of the mountain, and the following message didn’t arrive for more than an hour. “He said the dog was alive and he was trying to catch it but couldn’t,” Hill says. “We were shocked.”

Sheriffs arranged for a helicopter transport to the area, but the sun was already low in the sky. They flew over the ridge where the message had come from and saw nothing, but they did scout a suitable landing spot. The next day, Foster and another crew member were airlifted onto the ridgeline at about 7,500 feet elevation. After some searching, they saw Moore’s body. And besides him was Finney—teeth bared, hair raised, and ready to attack. Finney barked at the two men.

“She looked skinny but she was moving well,” Foster says. “She was very protective of Rich.”

The two coaxed Finney over with a can of wet dog food—rescuers had laced it with a sedative prior to the flight. They collected Moore’s remains and Finney, and flew the 35 miles back to Pagosa Springs.

In town, Holby knew something was up when sheriff Mike Le Roux showed up at her door on the evening of October 30. Le Roux had kept Holby informed via daily phone calls and text messages throughout the search, but an in-person meeting was somewhat out of the ordinary.

“He sat on the couch and I knew right away they were going to say it,” Holby says. “My emotions were completely out of control—it was hard not to be that way.”

The sheriff’s office has yet to publish an official cause of death, but rescuers told Holby that Moore had likely died of hypothermia and exposure. He was lost, stranded on a steep ridge on the eastern side of the peak, far from the trail. He had smashed his glasses and probably could not see where he was going. His body was about 500 yards from the farthest boundary of the search.

“It was kind of a closure, I suppose, but I don’t think there’s ever closure on someone you love,” Holby says. “Not when they are supposed to be here because they are healthy and strong and happy.”

And then they told Holby the rest of the news. Finney, all four pounds of wriggling and barking and bug-eating energy, was alive. Holby and her son rushed to the animal hospital the next day, and there she was.

“My son and I both wept,” Holby says.

Nobody knows how Finney found ways to eat, find water, and evade mountain lions and black bears high on the mountain. Holby has some theories. Since returning home, Finney has been an expert hunter of insects, capable of snatching moths and other flying bugs out of the air. She also will dig up grubs in the backyard and slurp them down.

“I think she was eating bugs and rodents that burrow in the ground—mice, chipmunks, squirrels,” she says.

There are other new behaviors that Holby has noticed with her dog. Finney won’t leave her side, no matter the situation. And while Finney was previously social with other dogs—now, she cowers behind Holby when one approaches. “I still don’t know how the mountain lions wouldn’t have found her, but she’s a clever little thing,” she says.

Holby has a final theory of how her dog made it through the ordeal, one that she thinks about on lonely afternoons. From her living room in Pagosa Springs, Holby can look out her windows and across the valley to the east and see the scraggly profile of Blackhead Peak rising in the distance.

“I keep feeling as though she was sent to me by Rich,” Holby says, “Who probably told her to go home and take care of me.”