Dog lost for two months found in Perry County's Tom Moore caves

On Saturday, while exploring the Tom Moore cave system in Perry County, Missouri, a group of cavers came across a lost dog alone in the dark.

Gerry Keene was with a group of experienced cavers, five of them children. The plan was to go from the Berome Moore entrance and move through a mile of caves and emerge at the Tom Moore entrance. However, about 20 minutes after entering the cave, the group found the dog.

He said the dog was just lying there in the main passage and appeared to have given up.

"She's in the pitch black, and the poor baby wouldn't even move for us at first," Keene said. "But once she had been in the light for a bit, she started to get energized."

Keene volunteered to get help while the rest of the group continued on as originally planned. A flashlight was left near the dog so it would have some light, and Keene crawled back to the surface. He called his friend, Rob Cahoon, an assistant fire chief with the Biehle fire department. As he waited for Cahoon to arrive, Keene started knocking on doors of nearby houses to see whether he could find the dog's owner.

"Which is hysterical because I'm wearing my cave gear and all muddy," Keene said. "I must have looked like a hobo banging on people's doors."

He finally found someone who said they would call around to try to find the owner. Keene went back to the cave entrance and spotted Rick Haley, who was part of a survey team with the Cave Research Foundation. This team was doing an underwater cave or "sump" dive to try to connect one cave to another, however, that operation had been aborted because of equipment malfunction.

Keene said he "conscripted" Haley to help with the rescue. While they were gathering their gear to go back down, Jeff Bohner arrived, alerted by his neighbor that his lost dog may have been found. Keene showed him a picture he'd taken of the dog, and Bohner recognized Abby, 13, who been missing for almost two months.

Bohner said Abby and his other dog, Summer, have the run of the whole area. However, on the evening of June 9, Summer came home but Abby didn't.

"They're pretty inseparable so I knew something had happened to her," Bohner said.

Since she'd been gone so long, Bohner said he had pretty much written off finding Abby. However, seeing the picture on Keene's phone made him very happy.

Gerry Keene and Rick Haley holding Abby, who they helped rescue from a cave after she had been missing for nearly two months.Courtesy of Gerry Keene

Keene and Haley went back into the cave with Cahoon acting as their surface support.

"The entrance is not inconsequential," Haley said. "You have to crawl. It's vertical. It's steep. There's hardly anything to hang onto, and it's very tight in places."

Haley brought a duffel bag and a blanket to put Abby in, so she would be easier to move back out of the cave. When they got to Abby, Haley said he was surprised at what he saw.

"She was just laying there balled up on the mud floor," Haley said. "She did not get up or wag her tail, she was in pretty bad shape. It was obvious she had been there a long time. She was skin and bones, emaciated. There's plenty of water down there but zero things to eat."

Haley has been a caver since 1989 and is very familiar with the Tom Moore cave system. He said the part of the cave where Abby was found does flood at times and there had recently been some heavy rains. Haley speculated Abby got swept there by water.

Keene and Haley packed up Abby in the duffel bag and got her back above ground.

"She was willing to get up and walk around when we got back to the surface, but she was shaky and staggering," Haley said.

Cahoon fed her some beef jerky.

"Rob almost lost his finger tips when he fed her," Haley said.

Bohner was happy to see Abby alive and thankful to the cavers who found her and brought her out.

"Abby is recovering well," Bohner said. "She's still very thin, but she's been eating well. She's slowly getting back to a regular diet. She's walking around and friendly. Looks like she's going to make a full recovery."