Valerie the Miniature Dachshund Has Been Rescued After Surviving for 529 Days on a Rugged Australian Island
The eight-pound pup is now decompressing after her epic adventure in the wilderness, a feat rescuers say was “just incredible”
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After 529 days on the run, Valerie the dachshund is safe and sound.
The eight-pound sausage dog recently made headlines around the world for surviving on a rugged Australian island for more than a year. For months, the miniature dachshund eluded capture after disappearing during a family camping trip on Kangaroo Island, located off the coast of South Australia.
Now, however, rescuers say they’ve finally nabbed the black-and-tan wiener dog using some clever tactics. The pup is “fit and well,” according to a social media post from Kangala Wildlife Rescue, the local nonprofit that went to great lengths to save Valerie.
“We are absolutely thrilled and deeply relieved that Valerie is finally safe and able to begin her transition back to her loving parents,” the group writes.
Valerie’s saga dates back to November 2023, when she was just a 1-year-old puppy on a vacation with her human parents: Georgia Gardner and Josh Fishlock. The family was spending a few days camping on the 1,700-square-mile Kangaroo Island.
On the second day of the trip, Gardner and Fishlock left Valerie in a playpen so they could go fishing. While they were gone, the tiny dog escaped and sprinted off into the wilderness.
The heartbroken couple spent days looking for Valerie but eventually had to return to their lives in Broken Hill, New South Wales. They were not optimistic that their pampered dog—an “absolute princess,” as Gardner told the Washington Post’s Victoria Craw last month—would survive in the snake-filled wilderness.
But around a year later, residents of Kangaroo Island spotted a small dachshund with a pink collar near Stokes Bay, around nine miles from where Valerie had gone missing. Volunteers with Kangala Wildlife Rescue began working diligently to capture the petite pooch. They installed trail cameras to monitor her movements and set out enticing foods like chicken and tuna.
However, even the promise of a yummy meal was not enough to lure the small dog. They set up a trap pen with a remotely operated door and filled it with food, some of Valerie’s old toys and a crate that resembled her old one at home. They also created a scent trail leading to the pen using ripped-up pieces of a t-shirt Gardner had worn in 12-hour shifts.
By mid-April, Valerie had begun visiting the pen regularly. Volunteers camped out nearby, but they had a hard time capturing the dog because her visits were irregular, typically spaced five or six days apart.
Eventually, though, the circumstances aligned so that volunteers could apprehend the wiener dog. They had to wait until she was in a specific area of the cage before they could press the button that activated the pen’s door. Rescuers also wanted to wait until Valerie was calm to reduce the risk of her making another run for it.
Lisa Karran, one of the nonprofit’s directors, wore the remnants of Gardner’s t-shirt and entered the cage calmly, along with other volunteers. They also brought roast chicken and some of Valerie’s dog food from home to show her they were not threats.
“The idea is just to sit,” Karran says in a video posted to Facebook. “Don’t make direct eye contact. Have your posture either lying down or shrugged or low, and you just wait. It is a time game.”
Karran didn’t have to wait long for Valerie to come around.
“She came up, would sniff us and we’d just go by her cues, until she was completely calm and snuggled up in our laps,” Karran says in the video. “It was amazing.”
For now, the organization is giving Valerie some time to decompress from her epic adventure. She is likely suffering from “lost dog syndrome,” a temporary state of stress and disorientation some pups experience from being in survival mode after getting separated from their families. Because of that, she probably wouldn’t have responded if her human parents had been there and called her.
Now, Gardner and Fishlock are scheduled to arrive on Kangaroo Island within about a week to take Valerie home.
“She’s just incredible,” Karran says in the video. “When you see her, you think how? How did you survive that long where you were?”
The island is full of threats, including at least two venomous snake species and wedge-tailed eagles that are capable of hunting animals much bigger than Valerie. The dog not only managed to escape these dangers, but she also figured out how to feed herself. Experts believe she probably subsisted on roadkill and dam water.
One of the biggest challenges rescuers faced while trying to capture Valerie was dealing with the “hundreds of wildlife” on the island, including possums, wallabies, kangaroos, goannas and feral cats, according to a Facebook post from Kangala Wildlife Rescue. Rescuing the small dog was not as simple as just “baiting and setting traps,” because those resident animals were “all just after a feed also.”
In the end, the organization says its volunteers spent more than 1,000 hours trying to catch Valerie. They traveled roughly 3,100 miles in their pursuit of the pup.
Gardner writes in a post on Facebook that she is “incredibly grateful” for the tireless efforts by the nonprofit group and community members.
“For anyone who’s ever lost a pet, your feelings are valid, and never give up hope,” she writes. “Sometimes good things happen to good people.”
