Photos By Diane Lewis Photography for AKC/©AKC
Missing Pet? Call Bravo the Rat Terrier, a Trained Pet Detective By Penny Leigh | Updated: Feb 17, 2023
T wo days until Christmas and Chandler Ray could not wait to get home. A heavy rain did not deter the 23-year-old as he left his girlfriend’s place in Raleigh, North Carolina, to make the two-hour trip to see his family. His drive had barely started when his vehicle hydroplaned on the wet road, flipped, and struck a tree. The crash totaled his car and critically injured Ray. As paramedics airlifted him to the hospital, they had no idea that a passenger was left behind. Ray’s beloved Newfoundland, Rufus, had been riding in his favorite spot in the back seat and vanished from the crash scene. “I rushed to Raleigh and frantically searched for Rufus while knowing I had to get to WakeMed to be with my son,” says his mother, Kathy Ray, of Washington, North Carolina. It seemed impossible that there was
no sign of a 150-pound black shaggy dog. Ray suffered a spinal cord injury that resulted in paralysis from the waist down. When he regained consciousness, it was not his condition that concerned him. “My son came to and learned that we had not found Rufus, and it wasn’t
losing his legs that made him say he didn’t want to live … it was losing Rufus,” Ray’s mother says. But then, a tiny glimmer of hope: Someone mentioned that they had seen a social media post about a Raleigh woman whose dog could find missing pets. Finding Rufus On Christmas Eve, Balynda Brown was driving to visit her mother for the holidays when her phone rang. “I turned the car around. I had to go help,” she says. Just a month earlier, she and her Rat Terrier, Bravo, completed their studies in the Missing Animal Response Network (MARN), a program to train dogs to track missing pets. Hunting for Rufus would be their first real case. “When I pulled up to the wreck site, I had no idea how anyone could have survived this. It looked like an airplane crash,” Brown says. “Everywhere you
The bedside reunion of Chandler Ray and his beloved Rufus
Missouri Pet Breeders Association | Page 25
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