Two Possible Leo Sightings!

In case you didn't know it, fliering for Leo is a great way to generate Leo sightings! That's just what happened when one of Leo's supporters was out this evening fliering in the area around Douglas Park. It's always a good idea to talk to people that you encounter as you flier -- engage them in the search by making it a little personal, show them the picture, make a statement about Leo being scared and not knowing the area. This evening's fliering volunteer knows this, and she spoke with more than one person that has seen a dog in the area that may have been Leo. Here's what our volunteer reports:

"I went around the Douglas Park area and spoke to a few people who had seen him. One boy lives on 18th street (that is on the perimeter of the park ) thinks that he saw him on Wednesday morning. He was going home to look on the website to confirm that it was the same dog that he saw. " This would have been about 24 hours after the previous sighter saw what may have been Leo. Then of the second sighting, our volunteer said:

"The other family that said they saw him confirmed that they had seen him on Wednesday night at the corner of Quincy and 16th. He tried to play with their dog but their dog was scared of him because he had apparently been attacked before by a dog so he doesn't like dogs coming up to him. He then ran down the path towards the swings. They remembered him because they looked around for his owner but didn't see anyone around." This would have been Wednesday, June 17th, about 8pm, right there in Douglas Park. The family was showed the flier with one of Leo's pictures before making this statement. (Note that they found the dog they saw to be interested in playing with their dog. This sounds great, but in general, bringing a leashed dog to the area to try to draw Leo out is so risky and likely to backfire that it is not recommended. And of course we don't want anyone unleashing their dog with the idea of putting both dogs on equal footing.)

In addition to these sightings, the volunteer also told us: "I also spoke to several other people on Quincy that said that people had asked them who the owner of the dog was that was running around. I really think that he's around there but he won't be for long if it isn't literally plastered with fliers on every street and they need to be put in the direction of the traffic. i.e. so that people in cars and walking don't have to turn to look at the ad, it kind of meets them at eye level. "

I know from wandering around Douglas Park for a while on Wednesday evening is that it would be a great place to hang from the perspective of a dog seeking to avoid capture. We feel very positive about pursuing this area to look for Leo, and spread the word about him. And fortunately we have a feeding station already set up in the area, but based on these possible sightings, we need to add 1-2 more feeding stations. This means we need more people to monitor the feeding stations. So here's a run-down of what feeding stations are all about:

1) once early in the day and once later in the day, a volunteer goes to the feeding station to see if the food left during the previous FS check has been eaten. (Basically, the volunteer needs to supply the food, and also, note that water at the feeding station makes it a better FS.)
1a) if the food hasn't been eaten, it needs to be pitched and replaced with the same type of food -- kibble-based and then topped with something smelly like canned cat food to draw Leo over to it
1b) if it has been eaten, then we add a feature to the feeding station to determine who's eating from it -- there are several ways to do this
2) once we determine that Leo is eating from our feeding stations, we reduce the number to just one, and
3) when he has an established pattern of eating from the one feeding station, we replace it with a humane trap. By this time we've increased the quality of the food being offered. This can take days to even weeks to get him to this point, starting when we get those feeding stations down and volunteers monitoring them

So, can you help out with feeding stations? Please email me if you can. Leo could get impatient waiting for us to put out the word and put out the food! Even just one time checking a feeding station will help.

I'm going to follow this post up with another one first thing Saturday morning with information about how you can help this weekend -- the sooner the better. If you can flier, please get started printing the flier or ordering copies from a printing place, and don't forget to weather-proof them with sheet protectors, large ziploc bags, or clear contact paper. Then check the blog Saturday for direction on where to go. Oh and print some business cards too which are great to hand out to people you talk to.

Nancy Despeaux
TesterDesp@aol.com