Runaway Dog Escapes Death
By Rosalind S. Helderman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 25, 2002; Page VA22

Emaciated, covered with ticks and cringing at the back of a trash compactor scheduled to crush its contents that day, Penny hardly looked like the sister and mother of Australian shepherd champions.

But thanks to the kindness of strangers, the runaway dog who survived on the streets for four months was saved, nursed back to health and returned to her Chantilly family.

Officials from the Loudoun County Animal Care and Control Department have been rooting for the dog ever since Janette Reever, a field supervisor, pulled her trembling and starving from the cardboard box recycling bin at Victory Van Corp. in Sterling on July 5. Despite Penny's exhaustion and the extreme heat in the large trash bin, she never tried to bite Reever, and that's unusual in the animal rescue business.

"Usually they're so scared and so freaked out, especially with what she had been through. She never once tried to bite. She didn't even try to snap," Reever said.

Bill Hine, a warehouse worker at Victory Van, said he called animal services after a co-worker heard a dog yelping in the compactor while he was throwing away cardboard.

"If we had been busy with a lot going on and we had gotten more things in there, we wouldn't have heard her," Hine said.

Reever said that hungry animals frequently jump into trash bins looking for food but that it's unusual to find an animal trapped in a garbage compactor. Even more unusual, she said, is finding a dog with a family still looking for her after so many months.

"To be able to return a dog like that, I was shocked that we had an owner," she said.

Penny spent several weeks in the animal hospital until shelter officials found her family Friday.

"When they called us and said they found her, we ran right out there and picked her up," said Mary Koditek. "It's incredible. I really never thought they would find her."

The Koditek family adopted Penny, a 6-year-old purebred Australian shepherd, in March from the Ross-Mar Kennel in Thurmont, Md. There, Roscoe and Mary Ann Harbaugh raise award-winning dogs. Penny's brother Take Charge Sarge competed in 2000 at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden in New York. The Harbaughs also show several of Penny's 20 puppies.

After three litters, the Harbaughs decided it was time for Penny to go home with a family. But just four days after arriving in Virginia, the shy dog squeezed under the Koditeks' gate and bolted.

"I think she just missed her family. She had been with them all her life," Koditek said.

The Koditeks were distraught. They hung posters in their neighborhood for weeks and reported Penny missing to shelters in Fairfax and Loudoun counties. The Harbaughs were upset as well, hoping the sweet dog had been taken in by a kind neighbor. They also hoped that if Penny were found, a microchip implanted in her neck when she was a puppy would help bring her home.

Loudoun officials scan all lost dogs for microchips and found Penny's, but in the meantime, they located the lost-dog report her family had filed.

Koditek said Penny has been relaxing at home and is starting to regain weight.

"Her hair is dirty, and she's so thin. The kids even said, 'That's not Penny,' but I could tell by her eyes," she said. "Now we're feeding her as much as she wants, including table scraps."