Colorado deputies find dog that was lost in mountains for three months

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) — A golden retriever spent three months in the mountains outside of Colorado Springs, Colorado.

But with the help of some new technology and a few Fremont County deputies, the dog returned home.

For Taylor Salazar’s family, their golden retriever, Farrah, is no ordinary dog.

“I bought Farrah for my husband, who was battling stage 4 stomach cancer in 2019,” Salazar said.

Farrah was his faithful companion for three months, with him until he drew his final breath.

“He loved her,” Salazar said. “She brought a lot of happiness into our home.”

In June, tragedy struck again when Salazar’s dad had a seizure and crashed while driving with Farrah.

First responders had to use the Jaws of Life to get her father out.

Both survived the crash, but Farrah ran away.

Salazar said she and her family looked frantically “three times a day, morning, noon and night looking for her, searching for her.”

Salazar took to social media pleading for help, saying, “I feel like we are running out of time.”

The post made its way to the Fremont County Sheriff’s office.

“We do have mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes here, raccoons,” Deputy William Saunders said.  “I wouldn’t expect a dog like a sweet golden retriever dog to survive that long up here,” he said.

Days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months.  Salazar began to lose hope.

“We hadn’t seen her in a while, nobody’s seen her. So I was like, well maybe that, maybe she’s gone,” she said, “They called her the Ghost of Eight Mile because you’d see her and then you wouldn’t see her.”

The deputies decided to use technology in the search.

They launched a high-end police drone, equipped with a thermal infrared camera, and five minutes later, they spotted Farrah.

“It was honestly just complete luck,” Deputy Justin Toppins. “We saw a heat signature that, that was kind of looked like a coyote. We switched to our color view and pretty quickly saw that it was the dog that we’ve been looking for.”

Farrah returned home several pounds lighter and now howls like a coyote, but Salazar is grateful to the deputies who brought her best friend home.

“They are our family; they’re our heroes,” she said. “We wouldn’t have her without them, and just that they were willing to help us with something that seemed impossible.”

Saunders said it’s all part of the job.

“Our duty is to help people, and Taylor needed this really bad,” Saunders said.  “Our job isn’t necessarily just law enforcement; we like to help our communities. And that’s what it’s all about for us.”