When July 4 fireworks exploded over a campsite on the Animas River south of Silverton, Konni the Belgian Malinois’ puppy legs hit the trail.
Her unsought freedom may have killed her if not for the kindness of strangers.
Konni was raised a lady, dependent on a daily diet of kibble and an air-conditioned Phoenix apartment.
But for two weeks, she was lost in the rocky San Juan Mountains, sometimes covering four miles per day, almost coyote-like except for her wide pink collar.
A core group of five searchers believed that Konni survived on a banquet of road kill, rodents and strategically placed metal bowls with just enough dog food to tease her but not enough to keep her full.
As first reported by the Durango Herald, the locals put up dozens of signs with her picture on it, trail cameras that tracked her movements at nearly 11,000 feet, mapped her movements and set out a cage with a pressure floor designed to trap her.
It was the bright pink collar that most Good Samaritans noted when they reported seeing her.
For more than two weeks, she kept on running.
Searcher and veterinarian Cathy Hartney said Konni is “on the small side” of the herding breed Belgian Malinois, which resembles a German Shepard and is often used by police and military.
“Lots of dogs get lost in the mountains and don’t come back,” said Hartney. “Konni is a wonder.”
The search for a lost pup
On July 5, the day after her escape, James and Dana Hite posted her photo on the Silverton Community bulletin board Facebook page with an urgent message: “We lost our baby girl last night!”
In Dana Hite's heart, there was little hope. "There was so much land and trees. She could have gone anywhere."
The next night, a combat veteran named Jimmy Keene II, met with the family.
On July 6, a volunteer group from Durango spent the holiday weekend tacking 50 signs with Konni’s photograph and her family’s phone numbers on pine trees and traffic sign poles.
That day, Keene and a small army of locals trekked for eight miles in lower terrain, unaware that Konni was already in the high country.
By the fourth day, the Hites had to leave for home, departing Colorado with sadness and a touch of grief knowing Konni was all alone. "I cried all night thinking we would never see her again," said Dana Hite.
But, as if by dog osmosis, Konni was spotted alive and surprisingly far away.
A fairy tale mountain town
Silverton is a mountain town that sits in a high bowl in the Animas River valley surrounded by 13,000-foot mountains (thirteeners). Konni had traveled at least 1,000 feet in elevation to Molas Pass at nearly 11,000 feet.
In the following days, the black and tan puppy haunted the perimeter of Molas Lake Park and Campground between Silverton and Durango. On July 11, she was spotted hiding out in an old mine shed.
That Facebook post received 337 hits and was shared 55 times. The Hites were getting up to five phone calls a day from people who happened to see their signs.
Keene wanted people to know that an entire community was behind finding the lost dog, even though he was the point person for a village of searchers “because I lived close."
One night, he sat on watch for four hours in freezing hail behind a cluster of bushes alongside Highway 550, waiting for a runaway dog that never showed.
“I was soaking wet. The hail was coming down. It was not ideal conditions, but a lot of the great things in life are not easy,” he said. “In the military, there was a saying. It was called ‘Embrace the suck.'”
Highway 550 is a hazardous, steep road with narrow lanes and often no guardrails. No one knows how Konni escaped getting hit by the occasional speeding Jeep as she traversed the two-lane stretch.
Keene decided to set a trap that would close behind her if she went inside for food.
On Tuesday night, on July 17, nearly two weeks after she ran off, a trail cam blinked on and recorded Konni enter the trap three times, but the trap wasn’t set to shut.
On July 18, she was a no-show.
It may have been the lowest day, emotionally, for searchers.
“Three of us spent a good portion of that day past dark. Driving home that night, I felt discouraged,” said Hartney, the veterinarian.
Vienna sausages
Despite fading hope, when the sun came up on July 19, a campground worker spotted Konni and kept her interested in staying around with a can of Vienna sausages
By this time, Konni was losing trust and startlingly close to feral but she was no match for Keene, an Army veteran with three combat tours, including one in Baghdad and Fallujah, who was not going to let a dog beat him.
“I knew I only had one chance,” he said.
Leftover kibble and a chin scratch
Video footage shows Keene, a big, bearded man stretched on his stomach on the Hite family’s orange checkered picnic blanket as the pup approached him with her tail between her legs, her tags swinging from the collar on her by now skinnier neck.
As he tickled Konni under the chin, she inched closer for a bite of leftover kibble Keene had scavenged from his truck.
When she snuck a look behind her, in a lightning-quick move, Keene snatched her underneath the collar, heaved her toward his chest and bear hugged her from behind as she struggled and snapped.
When veterinarian Hartney pulled up moments later, Keene gave a huge grin.
“She’s in the truck.”
Keene knows about PTSD. He chose to move to an isolated town like Silverton in 2019 because it suited his need to avoid crowds. Here, he found his purpose, escorting veterans with similar demons on weekly trips into the wilderness with a non-profit he runs called San Juan Mountain Adventures .
Every weekend, Keene makes an arduous 13-mile trip to Engineer Pass and swaps out a battered American flag with a new one because "they get torn up pretty fast by the hail and wind up there."
'I'm not crying, you're crying!'
On exam, Hartney found that despite losing about 25% of her body weight and scratches to her nose and paws, the spoiled family dog with the pink collar was healthy and even allowed her some touches.
In his life, Keene has saved the lives of four humans and now a dog.
People on the Silverton community Facebook page call him a hero.
“He caught him with his bare hands!” said one woman.
“I’m not crying, you’re crying,” said another.
When the Hites and and a wiggly Konni reunited last weekend in Keene’s home, one could sense from a video Keene took the relief in the dog's body as she nosed James Hite's face, her paws on his shoulders.
Dana Hite said she cuddles with the family and thanks the entire town, and especially "Jimmy for having the courage to go out and get close and grab her!"
“You had a family who was devastated by the loss of their dog. You had this dog who was scared to death in the wilderness. I felt compelled and I needed to help out,” said Keene. “It’s like a country song.”
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