There was no change Thursday for Christa Boyd and her son Braden Boykin, meaning no Scout, their lost dog, along with no beds to sleep in, no kitchen to cook in, and no bathrooms.
The only change from the past couple of days was in the weather with heavy rains and high winds creating muddy conditions and falling branches.
“It was pretty severe,” Boyd said. “Enough for us not to want to be out there around the trees and everything.”
Scout, a Boykin spaniel that served more as a pet than a hunting dog, has been missing from Mathews Brake, near Sidon and Cruger, since Dec. 7. That’s when Braden Boykin and a friend were setting out decoys for a morning of duck hunting and pulled back to the boat ramp only to find Scout was no longer in the boat.
Since Sunday, when a tracker they had teamed with found paw prints next to a farm field miles from Mathews Brake, Boyd and Boykin have been living out of their SUV while waiting for Scout to show up. They were encouraged early Christmas morning when a grainy image on a trail cam showed what looking like a dog similar to Scout eating some kibble they had sprinkled on the ground.
“This is our attitude,” Boyd said. “We haven’t seen a random spaniel out here, so it must be her.”
The only image found on the trail cam Thursday was an opossum. The weather stopped the pair from spending too much time looking around, so they cooked up bacon on a portable charcoal grill and spilled the grease on the ground.
“We just feel like we hope she hasn’t moved,” Boyd said. “We can’t do anything about the weather, but we hope she hasn’t moved and is still in the area and hasn’t been spooked. Where else would we go? This is the last place we saw her.”
Boyd said she has the support of her husband, Rick — “He wishes he could be here” — the other five children at home in Madison, and her parents, who have made the trip to resupply them four or five times since Scout went missing.
“My family’s all on break (from school and work), so it’s an easier time to drop everything and be available,” she said.
Boyd said she has received great support from people throughout the area, but she also understands there are people who don’t understand.
“We hope we won’t be doing this next week,” she said.
• Contact Gavin Maliska at 581-7235 or gmaliska@gwcommonwealth.com.
