By The Numbers for Week 8 of the Prep Football Season
October 28, 2015
Lafourche, Terrebone Halloweens moved to Friday
October 28, 2015
It’s been a month since Stella, the white maltese whose image is popping up just about everywhere, went missing, but her family remains hopeful that their beloved pet will find her way home.
The last weekend of September started ordinarily enough. Natalie Lindsey and her husband Chris, along with their two daughters and Natalie’s mother-in-law, were settling in in Chattanooga, Tenn. for the weekend’s Ironman competition, triathlons the couple competes in regularly. The Lindsey family left their four-legged family members, Stella and Cole, with a dog sitter for the four-day trip. A friend was picking up the dogs and bringing them back to their home in Sugarwood Subdivision Monday.
“I told her, on Monday, we’ll be home in the evening, so why don’t you just take them back to our house and we’ll have a friend that works close come walk them?,” Natalie remembered. “They know her, she’s babysat our children, so it’s not a total stranger … She brought them home and when she walked them at lunch, everything was fine. My other dog is kind of ornery. He doesn’t go outside to other people except us, so he didn’t go outside at lunchtime. We got to Baton Rouge at about 6 p.m. and my husband said, ‘Let’s have her walk them one more time before we get home.’ So I called and asked if she minded going over there one more time and walking them because it’ll be a little while.”
The friend went over to the house, got Stella out first and brought out some ham in an effort to coax Cole outside.
“She bent down to show Cole the ham and said, ‘Come on, Cole. Come on out,’” Natalie said. “She said Stella kind of perked up her ears and took off through our wrought-iron fence. She was like a little rabbit. She just ran.”
Stella, adopted in November 2014, was a rescue and very skittish, Natalie said. The dog first took off down the street, wandering into a nearby yard where the friend attempted to lure Stella back with more ham. Stella began to approach her but quickly took off again, this time toward Savanne Road.
“I think people were on bikes trying to find her and from what another friend told me, [Stella] was running in the field behind Sugarwood, darting from one side to the other, scared and confused,” Natalie said.
The search continued throughout nearby neighborhoods until 1 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 29. Natalie searched again several hours later while the area was still quiet, but ultimately went back home without her furry companion.
The following Wednesday, Natalie received a phone call from a man who saw Stella in a ditch near Valhi Extension, but was not able to catch her before she took off in a cow pasture near a barn behind Richland Row, nearly a mile from Sugarwood. Another sighting came shortly after from a man working near Savanne, but since then no one has spotted Stella. Natalie, however, said the outpouring of support from the community has kept the family’s hope alive.
Since going missing, billboards displaying Stella’s face sit high above Martin Luther King Boulevard and the family continuously passes out flyers, puts signs in friends’ yards and goes door-to-door to share Stella’s story with as many people as possible. The dog’s photo has also made its way across Facebook through Natalie’s posts on her personal page and a page dedicated to placing missing animals back with their loved ones.
“She has brought so many people in the community together to look for her. Lost Pets of Terrebonne Parish, that’s a wonderful thing if you’ve got a lost animal or a found animal,” she said of the page, which, combined with her personal posts, has generated over 2,600 shares of Stella’s photo. “… I’m a [dental] hygienist and every patient that comes in, I talk about it. I give them a flyer. I’ve got some wonderful friends that I met through this whole ordeal on Facebook that said, ‘Let me help you. I’ll bring [flyers] to businesses …’ I know the awareness is there. I have people that I don’t know calling me saying, ‘We’re praying for her and for y’all.’ It’s been amazing and I know God has a hand in this and I feel like sometimes you get tested. God wants you to show that you are faithful and that you trust Him.”
As the days tick by, the family remains steadfast in their belief that Stella will somehow find her way home. Clothes and her dog bed have been left out at locations she was spotted and Natalie said she hopes that if someone has taken her in, that they realize there is a family longing for her return.
“We’re just praying that somebody understands that not only are we missing her, she’s a part of our family,” she explained. “That’s why we look so hard … While somebody might be taking care of her, her heart is aching for her family. I wish they would think about that side of it, too. You may think she’s precious and sweet, but there’s a family that is hurting for her and she is hurting for them, as well.”
A $1,000 reward is offered for Stella’s return. Anyone with information regarding her location can call 985-209-7397 or 985-209-9493. •
