Bob Swensen is Everyone’s First Call When Their Pet Goes Missing

Astro Ball’s Great Big Adventure began one sweltering July afternoon when the 5-year-old, 80-pound Great Pyrenees-collie mix escaped the backyard of a family member who was pet-sitting him while his own family was on vacation.

That started a far-reaching odyssey as Astro traversed Baltimore County, including Timonium, Historic Lutherville, Country Club Park, Orchard Hills, Kenilworth, West Towson, Ruxton, as far south as Lake Roland, and in the tunnels under 695. As distraught owners Kathryn and Alex Ball (both former employees of this magazine) frantically made their way back from their camping trip, they began posting their plight on social media, where one man was tagged again and again.

That man was Bob Swensen, a 59-year-old Baltimore County native, known among canine-loving circles as the Lost Dog Guy. His Lost Animal Resource Group has assisted with 1,500 missing animal cases this past year alone. That includes dogs, cats, horses, turtles, “and other critters.” Swensen, who is always covered in dog hair and is usually wearing something emblazoned with a dog design, is, no surprise, a dog lover. He and his wife, Jen, have fostered close to 80 canines.

But there was one that stood out. Mira—short for Miracle—a Bichon-poodle mix rescued from a puppy mill, is the reason Swensen got into the lost-and-found business in the first place. Mira, who had an affinity for escaping, rehabilitated with the Swensens before being adopted and escaping yet again. Tapping into the foster community, Swensen learned about tracking, feeding stations, traps, and the importance of plastering an area with posters. Utilizing those skills, Swensen, an IT guy with an analytical mind, found Mira, this time in an elevator shaft. It seemed Mira was telling them something—so they adopted her.

“She’s my girl,” Swensen beams, flipping to pictures of Mira on his phone. (If you ask Swensen how many dogs he and his wife have he deadpans, “I have the legal three limit.”) Says Swensen, “After Mira, I just started helping people.”

Most dog owners believe that if their dog got loose, it would come running the minute it heard someone calling its name. (Or at least smelled its owner holding a treat.) But that’s not usually the case.

“You can’t catch them,” says Swensen. “Survival mode does strange things to a dog. It puts them in a feral, almost wild-animal instinct. They are going to avoid every threat, every noise, and every movement, even from the owners.”

The Balls experienced that firsthand when, on the fourth day of Astro’s escape, they had followed some sightings to the light rail tracks in Historic Lutherville near Front Avenue. There they spotted Astro and got within a few yards of him, but he simply looked at them and walked back into the brush and woods near the tracks.

“It was heartbreaking to be so close and be unable to reach him or have him recognize us at all,” says Kathryn. “When we called Bob and told him what had happened, he confirmed that Astro was in ‘survival mode’ and we had to change our tactics to get him back.”

In the ensuing days, this happened several times. The worst incident was when employees at 84 Lumber told Kathryn that they heard howling early in the morning and thought they had spotted Astro by the light rail tracks adjacent to their business. Kathryn, a health care attorney, immediately went to the tracks the next morning, where she heard the distressing sound, too.

“It was like he was missing his pack. He was hidden in very dense weeds and brush, and I couldn’t see him, but I could hear him. I called Bob on the phone, and he talked me through a few different tactics to see if Astro would come to me.”

At one point, Kathryn was within 10 feet, and Astro turned and looked at her and then trotted off in the other direction. “There were too many weeds and brambles between us for me to grab him. He didn’t even recognize me. I couldn’t believe it. He is our glue dog—never far from any of us.”

For Swensen, who is constantly learning, joining trapping groups, and innovating, a lot of what he does is teach pet owners to recalibrate their thinking. He’s part therapist, part detective, part dog whisperer.

“You have to be a calming force,” says Swensen. “They’re torn up, emotional, broken, frantic, and distraught.” He asks a lot of questions (there’s also a lengthy intake form on the website) and finds that focusing on answers calms people down. “If you give them a purpose and a direction it’ll help, get them out of panic mode,” says Swensen. He’s used to seeing people at their most vulnerable, but it doesn’t get easier. “You have to control your emotions but it’s hard.”

The nonprofit Lost Animal Resource Group (LARG) was started two years ago by Swensen, along with co-founders Denise Harris and Carmen Brothers. “We never ever ask for money,” says Swensen. (Though there is a fee if a family wants to use a service called Professional Pet Trackers run by Brothers.) All of LARG’s traps, tips, reassurance, perseverance, and advice is free.

Although social media has been incredibly helpful in spreading the word about a lost pet, Swensen says there’s no substitute for good old-fashioned leg work. When the Balls first contacted Swensen, he told them to get up at least a hundred “lost dog” posters around town—that way when someone spotted Astro, they knew whom to contact. They hung signs in neighborhoods, restaurants, supermarkets, and gave them to every postal carrier around. Soon the phone calls and texts began flooding in. Astro was seen by a mailman, light rail operators, a UPS driver, a runner, and the staff at Lutherville Animal Hospital (which just happens to be Astro’s vet)—and the Balls started marking each sighting.

“We created a shared map showing date, time, and location to help Bob and our family and friends who were trying to spot him,” says Kathryn. There was clearly a pattern—Astro was staying along Roland Run and the light rail tracks north and south. “I got multiple texts and calls nearly every day for the first two weeks. We realized the texts stopped when he ventured outside of the area where we had hung up the signs.”

So, they hung up an additional 100 posters in the area near Lake Roland. “Dogs usually return to the point of escape, home, or the last place they saw their family,” says Swensen. That appeared to be the case with Astro. “He was right in between of where he got out and home—literally right in the middle.”

Somewhere around Day 18, a man saw Astro in his backyard, between 695 and Kenilworth. Swensen went to the location and noticed that it looked like Astro had slept there for the night. So they set up a feeding station and Swensen enlisted the help of a Great Pyrenees owner who lived nearby. “She brought her two dogs to the spot and let them walk around and mark the territory,” says Kathryn. This apparently draws dogs back to their pack. And it worked. “Astro came back and ate the food from the feeding station for the first time. We were getting closer. He was signaling that he was ready to come home.”

“DOGS USUALLY RETURN TO THE POINT OF ESCAPE, HOME, OR THE LAST PLACE THEY SAW THEIR FAMILY.”

While having a pet on the lam is incredibly upsetting for the animal owner, Swensen’s tales of rescue and recovery offer so much hope. There was the family whose dog, Holly, got loose on a vacation in West Virginia. The family stayed in their camper for three months while LARG helped them track and eventually capture her. There was a woman whose dog, Dobby, bolted from her car after an accident. (That happens a lot.) Dog trackers eventually led the search party to the Vehicle Emissions Inspection center on Pulaski Highway and, while Swensen was canvasing the area with the woman and her father, Dobby was spotted. But it wasn’t as easy as snatching her. They sat down on the ground and utilized calming signals—one of the most important lessons in finding lost pets—which includes ignoring the dog, not being a threat, and remaining calm since dogs can sense anxiety. Says Swensen, “Dooby came up and circled her and then went right to her.”

Then there was a dog named Bolt. “Don’t ever name a dog Bolt,” Swensen chuckles. Bolt got out as he was being transported to a PetSmart in Ellicott City for an adoption event. Eventually sightings put Bolt in a nearby neighborhood where he would visit a family’s backyard and their two dogs. They could never catch him, but they would leave food out and he knew it was a safe space. The family contacted Swensen and allowed him to set up a drop net, a 25-foot soccer net that lures a dog with food, in their backyard. Swensen and Harris did a stakeout in the family’s basement—waiting and watching. Finally, the net dropped, and they raced toward it—you usually only have a few seconds before the dog can untangle itself from the net. Swensen uses a “lucky blanket” to throw over dogs until they calm down.

“Usually when I peel the blanket off, they’re like, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ like nothing ever happened.” It worked like a charm on Bolt.

Not every search ends with a tail-wagging dog. “There’s a percentage that you never find again or get killed,” says Swensen. But that makes the happy endings that much sweeter.

And on Day 19, Astro got his happy ending. He had ventured onto the porch of a woman in West Towson—scratching at the door to be let in, just as he does at home. The woman recognized Astro and called the Balls immediately. Alex raced over but Astro had run off again—or so they thought. It turned out he had just gone under the porch. Alex, a software engineer, crouched down but didn’t make eye contact, as he had been taught.

“Astro ran right to Alex, jumped up on him, and was ready to come home,” says Kathryn. “It was wild.”

They’re both certain Astro would not have come home without Swensen’s help.

“We were buoyed by his constant positivity and reassurance,” says Alex. “If it hadn’t been for Bob we’d have done it all wrong and who knows where Astro would be at this point.”

When Astro’s Great Big Adventure—which had played out on the Nextdoor message board (over 300 comments) and Facebook—finally came to an end, strangers celebrated. Comments ranged from “I’m still excited that Astro is home, even though I’ve never met him!” to “Anxiously waiting for Astro to pen his memoir.” People cried, donated to LARG in his name, and offered grooming “on the house.”

Anyone who has ever loved a pet was able to imagine how the Balls felt all those nights that Astro was gone and the immense, overwhelming relief they experienced two-and-a-half weeks later when he returned. That’s why Swensen keeps doing this—despite his ankle and disc issues and disrupted family time. It’s why he’ll slip on a ghillie camouflage suit as needed and spend time explaining the difference between a box trap, a Missy Trap, and a drop net to people in England and Canada and surrounding states and local counties who are adopting similar programs.

Swensen is like an OB-GYN who keeps pictures of all the babies he’s delivered—but instead, his phone is filled with photos and videos of all the dogs he’s personally found. (It’s 500 at last count.) He remembers their names and their humans, too.

“I always follow-up with families to see how they’re doing,” says Swensen. “It’s the biggest thrill in the world. I still get people calling me on the year anniversary.”

Swensen is now helping train volunteers—since LARG can get anywhere between five and 15 requests a day for lost animals.

“There are certain people who are the crazy ones like us. They will go out at three in the morning to put out a trap, or at 5 a.m. to pick up a dog or cat that’s been caught, or literally do a stakeout for days or weeks. They’re incredible warriors.”

He wants to ensure there is always someone who can answer the phone and say—we’re going to help you find your dog. Says Swensen, “You have to give people hope.”