Sarah Brown
For someone who teaches Tai Chi and Qigong, Jim Adamik was surprised to find his patience running thin last week, in the days after his two dogs went missing.
“I’m usually a calm, peaceful, get-along-with-everybody kind of guy, but I was getting very upset,” Adamik said. “I thought I was close to some kind of a nervous breakdown. They mean everything to me, and I didn’t realize how much until they were gone.”
Adamik’s German shepherds, Nymeria and Vorlund, slipped out Monday, March 2, near Pine Street and Evergreen Lane. They were found four days later, one mile away, and Adamik attributes the community response to the rescue.
“I got such a surprisingly fantastic response to my dogs being gone.”
He had “frantically” posted on several Facebook group sites and received hundreds of comments and multiple sightings during the next few days.
One of the earlier responses indicated one of the dogs, Nymeria, had been hit by a car. In fact, the family called Adamik to apologize and explain what happened, he said. After that incident, Nymeria took off toward Holley Road and 1st Avenue, while Vorlund headed toward Highway 20.
Adamik followed up on several sightings, but never found his dogs. Then the tips went silent.
Knowing Nymeria was injured, his concerns grew. He posted fliers around town, but didn’t venture far down Pleasant Valley Road because there was no place to hang signs, he said.
Finally, despite knowing it was frowned upon, he started hanging signs on groups of mailboxes down that road.
“Three hours later, while I’m shopping at Walmart with a shopping cart full of groceries, I get a call,” he said.
The man on the other end of the line said he’d seen the dogs on his property the last couple days, so Adamik abandoned his shopping cart and ran out of the store.
The property owner pointed to some bushes and said the dogs repeatedly came from that area. So Adamik approached until he could make out the figures of his dogs.
At first they were very leery, he said. His wife had read that it’s common that dogs who are out for several days will act like they’re afraid of their owners.
“So you have to be very careful in how you approach your own dogs, or they could take off again. But I was lucky enough. I called them in this clearing in the woods. I hunched down and said, ‘Come on babies. Come on, come on.'”
Nymeria, who has a habit of crawling toward her owner, started crawling toward him for about 30 feet. Then Vorlund followed.
“They both stayed by me and got excited and smelling and licking and all that.”
The dogs were taken to the veterinarian and placed on antibiotics. Vorlund had a gash under his leg, and Nymeria had an injured paw with, maybe, one or two broken toes, he said.
Adamik hasn’t considered himself much of a religious person lately, but the moment of being reunited with his dogs altered his perception.
“All of a sudden, in that second, I got religion. I really thank God for this miracle of bringing them back to me.”
Adamik and his wife moved to Sweet Home only two years ago, but this experience was like “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” he said, indicating the story of a community that helps each other.
“That’s the way people used to be,” he said of the television show, “but that’s the way people are, now, here in the Sweet Home area.”