Veteran’s service dog vanishes on snowy mountain after crash. See touching rescue
A veteran’s service dog vanished after a car crash on a snowy Colorado mountain, officials said.
With help from first responders and transportation workers, a lost pet rescue nonprofit group tracked the dog down, earned his trust and reunited him with his owner, Summit Lost Pet Rescue, Inc. said in an April 5 post on Facebook.
“It takes a village to save lost pets, and this was an AMAZING, collaborative mission!!” the group said in the post.
A firefighter working the crash and a Colorado Department of Transportation worker saw Bob the Shiba Inu escape out the car’s broken windshield and run across all four lanes of interstate traffic, “almost getting hit multiple times,” the group said.
“Cars and trucks were flying out of the tunnel and slamming on brakes trying not to hit Bob,” the group said.
The dog then ran up the mountainside at 11,000 feet of elevation and didn’t return.
The firefighter called Summit Lost Pet Rescue for help, the group said.
“Our Summit Lost Pet Rescue team immediately stepped into action!” the group said. “We asked for the medics to get some dirty clothes from the owner, who was on his way to the hospital, and we asked for permission to get items out of the car, which was on its way to the tow yard.”
Volunteers grabbed the scent items from the hospital and the car on their way to the crash site and coordinated rescue with Summit County Animal Control and Shelter.
“This isn’t an area where you can just casually park and walk around searching, because of the high traffic dangers, the crazy snowy weather, and the securities they have in place for the tunnel,” the group said. “We spoke with their team and understood and respected what we could and couldn’t do up there and they were amazing to work with. They allowed us to do what we know best, which is saving lost pets!!!”
The team set up a live camera and a “scent station” near the crash site, hoping it would help lure the scared dog out of hiding.
“There is SO much snow up at 11,000ft so he had very minimal places to hide,” the group said. “We searched the CDOT buildings with their team to rule those out. No sightings at all after Bob initially ran off after the crash.”
The next morning, the transportation department called the team with the news that a plow driver had spotted Bob “way up a steep snowbank RIGHT on I-70.”
The department monitored the pup on their cameras, and pet rescue volunteers took turns “doing calming techniques for 1.5 hours (because it was freezing and icy up there),” the group said. Volunteers noticed the pup “kept picking up his paws, probably because they were frozen,” so they started approaching more quickly, tossing him food and playing his owner’s voice from a phone to earn his trust.
“We finally got close enough to let him smell us, his Dad’s shirt, and pet him and feed him out of our hand, and we were able to leash him!” the group said.
Once they had him on a leash, a volunteer carried him down the mountain slope. The dog’s owner was released from the hospital around the same time, the group said.
A video shows the rescue and Bob and his owner’s touching reunion before starting back home to Utah.
The Eisenhower Tunnel is about a 60-mile drive west from Denver on Interstate 70.
This story was originally published April 10, 2025 at 12:49 PM.
