Joelle Fredman
WMAL.com
WASHINGTON — (WMAL) Janet Mihalyfi is looking for her missing dog, Havoc. She last saw him in 2013.
Mihalyfi, a resident of Arlington, Virginia, lost her Rottweiler on a Bethesda trail three years ago. She took him off his leash to drink water from a stream and he ran after a deer into the woods.
Mihalyfi spent countless hours and upwards of $40,000 on search efforts for Havoc, who she believes is living in Rock Creek Park.
“If you have a loved one, and you roughly know they are around, why would you ever give up?” Mihalyfi said.
There is little Mihalyfi hasn’t done to find her dog.
“You can set up grilling stations to try to get a food scent in the air to lure him, you can set up feeding stations that have cameras in the woods, you can go door to door in neighborhoods where he’s been seen to see if anyone has seen him but hasn’t called,” Mihalyfi said. “I have tried probably anything and everything.”
Even though he’s been in the wild for three years, Mihalyfi thinks that Havoc will bounce back to a house dog once she finds him.
“He’s like a coyote as this point, he’s living in Rock Creek Park, he’s hunting, he’s only traveling at night. It’s almost like they go into survival mode and they’re in that mode because they need to live, they need to find food, they need to find water, they need to find shelter,” Mihalyfi said. “But the second they have people again that take care of those needs, they go back into, I don’t know I’ll call it, ‘domesticated mode’.”
Although sightings are happening less frequently, Mihalyfi said that because she is tracking Havoc’s movements by the few calls she does still receive, she feels comforted to know her missing pet is still alive and well.
“It’s at least good to know what’s happening, it would be far worse to not know what happened,” Mihalyfi said. “I’m encouraged that he’s still surviving and that he’s doing so well on his own.”
Mihalfy said she will continue with her search efforts and will be putting up more signs of Havoc.
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