Hikers Find Lost Dogs On Mount St. Helens After Week-Long Journey

Two dogs spent a week on Mount St. Helens before separate hikers stumbled across them – cold, wet, and scared, but alive. They managed to make it miles away from where their owners initially lost them, even getting separated on the way.

Owner Dennis Elton drove with his two dogs, Woody and Brock, into Gifford Pinchot National Forest near Mount St. Helens on October 26, according to KGW. The pets appeared to catch the scent of something and ran off.

Elton then took the rest of the day trying to find Woody, a Brittany Spaniel, and Brock, a chocolate lab, but to no avail. It eventually became too dark and he had to give up the search for that day.

Still, the family did not give up.

For six days they repeatedly returned to the Mount St. Helens area looking for their lost dogs, and they posted pictures on Craigslist and social media.

“He spent $500 on gas and drove hundreds of miles. We were all heartbroken,” said Dennis’ wife, Shawn.

Then, on Sunday, Corey Theisen was hiking through the woods with his friends and found Woody. The dog had made it roughly 25 miles away from where he was first lost. Corey described the Spaniel as cold, wet and scared.

Hikers rescue two dogs lost for about a week near Mount St. Helens. https://t.co/13dFYG6suT #lostdogs #mountsthelens pic.twitter.com/fPFynB82Rv

— Seattle DogSpot (@SeattleDogSpot) November 8, 2015

“I was thinking how am I going to help this dog? So I took a couple pictures of him and I posted them online and I asked all my Facebook friends to help me.”

The lost dog page quickly got 9,000 shares.

Meanwhile, another hiker named Nick Gibson found Brock, also about 25 miles from the point the dog was first lost. He brought the chocolate lab home and put pictures of him on Facebook’s local lost pets page. The family nicknamed Brock Mud, according to the Daily Mail. Dennis Elton soon found Theisen’s post first.

“I said, ‘That’s Woody! That’s Woody!’ I stood up on the edge of my bed and said, ‘Where is he?!”‘

He got in contact with the hiker and drove to Portland to pick up Woody. Then he received a phone call from his wife Shawn saying someone else had picked up Brock while hiking in Lava Canyon.

Gibson explained, “[Shawn Elton] started telling me the story about the other dog and everything and it just sort of blew me away.”

The Gibson family agreed to let Dennis come to their home in the early hours to pick up the chocolate lab after picking up the other lost dog. The two dogs are now reunited in the Elton’s home and recovering after a long, difficult adventure.

Dennis Elton said, “They went 25 miles. I don’t know how they got through this.”

The dogs adventure near Mount St. Helen is incredible, but it isn’t the first time an owner has been reunited under unlikely circumstances.

As previously reported by the Inquisitr, a New Jersey family had lost their family dog Reckless in Hurricane Sandy, and were then reunited about 18-months later. Like with the Elton’s story the key to finding the missing dog was social media. The family’s story was posted on Facebook’s Monmouth County SPCA page along with pictures of Reckless, and the family was reunited in minutes.

Whether it’s lost dogs on Mount St. Helens or after a natural disaster, it seems social media can often be the best method for reuniting families with missing pets.

[Photo By Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images]