The Dog Walker Who Disappeared

Annette Poitras had planned to be gone only an hour. That was three days ago

- Katherine Laidlaw

When Annette Poitras regained consciousness, winded and dazed, she saw two sets of canine eyes peering back into hers. Moments before—or was it hours?— the professional dog walker had been working her way along a familiar gravel trail that snakes across Eagle Mountain, a 10-minute drive from the home she shares with her husband, Marcel, and their 20-year-old daughter, Gabrielle, in Coquitlam, British Columbia, Canada.

She had three dogs with her: Roxy the boxer, Bubba, a mix of poodle and pug, and Chloe, her own black-and-white border collie. When the four of them came across a fallen tree— its trunk, thick as a barrel, stretching over an expanse of soggy moss a meter below—Poitras clambered up to cross over it. That morning, after a walk in the rain, she had exchanged her soaked hiking boots for gumboots. As she trod on the slick wood, she’d slipped, stroking her back and head hard against the fallen tree as she fell to the forest floor. A bolt of pain had seared through her, and then the world went dark.

Now, as she lay on the ground, pain shot from her left armpit all the way down to her calf and she wondered, dizzily, if she’d cracked a rib. She slowly and carefully stood up and got back onto the trail.

Looking around past Roxy and Chloe, unleashed at her side, Annette realized that 13-year-old Bubba had bolted. She didn’t know what time it was or how long she’d been knocked out, but daylight was already disappearing, and the temperature, only seven degrees Celsius, was starting to fall. But she knew she needed to find Bubba before she could head home; leaving one behind was unthinkable.