By Ben Rodgers
Editor
SUAMICO – Nearly a year after the most stressful time of her life, Kim Bouschart has found a new group of friends with a calling borne from heartache.
On Dec. 1, 2017, the Bouschart family lost Toby, a 5-year-old black and white Australian cattle dog mix.
Bouschart was devastated and took to Facebook at her daughter Ali’s request to form a group to search for the missing pup.
The group quickly gained more than 4,000 likes and the community came together to search for Toby, who still hasn’t been found.
“No matter who you talked to, everybody knew about Toby and that’s what increased the search,” Bouschart said. “I was faithful about making two (Facebook) posts a day.”
Then in January she started getting headaches, like someone was pulling a shade over her right eye.
She was diagnosed with choroidal melanoma, and by the end of February she had the eye removed.
“That’s when this crazy, incredible group of women, all strangers to me, stepped up and said ‘We got you, we’ll step and do it,” Bouschart said.
That was the start of the Get Toby Home tactical dog search team that has since in some way helped nearly 50 dog owners get reunited with their lost canine companions.
“In our family, our glass is half full. So, yeah, you’re going through all of this stuff, but you keep moving, you keep moving because there is nothing else to do,” she said. “If you sit down you fall apart. So you keep moving and all of those people they helped us stay moving.”
Around March the search for Toby started to fade. The team formed an online group chat and decided to help others.
“We’re a group of passionate women who in our own ways came together,” Bouschart said.
Through donations of funds and supplies, the group has acquired digital cameras, cages, walkie talkies, and even bright green uniforms from Kim’s husband Marty.
The search for Toby has led to the development of a protocol in searching for other lost dogs.
Maps are created of the most recent sightings, the team is deployed around the area, and they wait in their cars, eyes peeled for the lost dog. Old food is placed in a cage and they wait.
“People know if there’s a dog missing – Get Toby Home – go to his Facebook,” Bouschart said. “We go through fields, we go through woods, we go – with permission – through peoples’ property.”
The search group has helped dog owners in a nearly 50-mile radius of Green Bay get reunited with their lost dogs.
In the search for Toby it wouldn’t be unusual to have 200 people looking for him. In hindsight, that’s a bad idea, because that many people are likely to scare a lost dog farther away, Bouschart said.
“We’ve learned obviously through the year that you don’t want to make things public,” said Lori Joachim, a member of the Get Toby Home Team. “But you want everybody to keep their eyes open and report things to you, but in the right manner.”
A year ago, Joachim had no idea that group would become what it is today.
In 2016, Joachim’s husband, Russell, had his heart stop for 12 minutes before being resuscitated.
Lori was amazed at the outpouring of support from the community to help her through that time.
“I felt I needed to do something to pay it back because people were so nice to us,” Lori said.
She then found out Bouschart was a neighbor and started bringing food over to help the family.
Her role has since evolved with the Get Toby Home team as she is now part of something bigger.
“We’re immediately on it,” Joachim said. “We need time, date, location, so we can find a pattern get traps out there, get cameras out there, to find the dog. That’s our ultimate goal, to get the dog home safe.”
One of the team members with boots on the ground is Dani Jerome-Nachtwey.
She is there because the group helped her this summer bring her lost dog Chocolate home after she was missing for 10 weeks.
“When chocolate went missing I didn’t have anybody besides my husband and my family to help me,” Jerome-Nachtwey said. “For these angels to come out of the woodwork, I’m happy there is a group out there that offers that kind of thing.”
She said she likes being able to help people who go through a pain she is all too familiar with.
“It’s an amazing feeling of gratitude, being able to help these people because I know the highs and lows of when your dog is missing,” she said. “You think you’re going to have her and you go home at the end of the day without her. I know the highs and the lows and it is a feeling of gratitude to get that satisfaction being able to help these people get these dogs home.”
That joy is what keeps the group moving, Bouschart said.
“There’s goodness that came out of this story,” Bouschart said. “It’s not all tragic. It’s tragic for my family but we’re able to bring so much goodness to other people and that’s probably the most selfless thing you could ever do.”
While the Bouscharts have adopted a new dog, Kona, a rescue dog who came from Texas, via Madison, they still haven’t given up hope of finding Toby.
“Unless we have a body, we’re continuing,” Kim said. “But at this point we think somebody has him, it could have been a truck driver who saw an injured dog and picked him up, or it could have been a farmer who is so rural he doesn’t have social media.”