What's up y'all?
Thanks for joining the Travel Tales and Talk podcast with Derek and Makayla.
I'm Derek.
I'm Makayla.
Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.
Uh oh, I think I've done it again.
I'm training dogs and one of them go missing.
And now I'm in the woods at night.
Honey, why are we in the woods at night?
Because you lost my dog again.
He lost himself.
And let me tell y'all, now the last episode y'all heard me tell this man, do not come
home if you left one of my dogs in the woods.
But it's dark.
So this time, he leaves my dog Scout, who was one of the babies.
He's one of the younger ones as well.
Leaves him in the woods alone.
And Scout, we like to joke that he is a forever puppy.
He acts like a toddler.
He is a toddler.
He literally, think about the things a toddler does when they're sticking fingers in sockets
and just being into everything.
Eating tennis balls.
Eating rocks.
Tearing up stuff.
Scout has lost two teeth over chewing on rocks.
Literally, the biggest teeth in a dog's mouth.
The molars.
They're huge, like the thickest and strongest biggest teeth in their mouth.
Our dog has lost both of his from chewing on rocks.
You have to think about it.
It has to be disgusting going in and difficult coming out.
But that's what he's going to do.
And that's Scout.
Scout is always into something.
He's always hyper.
He's a toddler.
He literally is a toddler.
He's a forever puppy.
But anyway, this particular.
This particular day, the day before, I wanted to get them out because the weather was perfect.
I was off from work and it was perfect tracking season for the dogs.
This makes perfect.
And we go to our same.
Well, this is a different location, but it's a usual spot that we go to.
So they know this place like the back of their hands.
And the crazy part is we go to our same spot and bam, they walk in.
Rabbit gets up right in front of them.
It just comes from out of nowhere and they go crazy and they run this rabbit for 45 minutes
to an hour.
And then all of a sudden, it just goes quiet.
Just like nothing.
Like they just disappeared.
And I was like, oh my God, this woman's going to kill me if I lose all four of them.
So I got to find at least two of them.
At least two of them.
That was my thought.
I got to find at least two of them.
So I mean like 30 minutes goes by, an hour goes by, hour and a half goes by.
And I'm like, oh my God, these dogs have disappeared.
And I had some crazy thoughts go through my head.
Like maybe they fell down a well, maybe a bear got them because their bear was in this
part of the state.
Maybe they got attacked by a bear.
Maybe it was a wolf coyote.
I started thinking like you did.
And I was like, no, it can't be it.
So I'm walking these woods.
I walked these woods for like an hour, two hours and nothing, not a trace.
They just disappeared.
And I was about to give up.
And then Tracker comes around the corner first.
Of course, he's the first one back.
I was like, whew, if I can come home with Tracker, she might not kill me because you
love Tracker.
Boy.
I was like, okay, I could sleep in the house, probably in the garage.
I could probably sleep in the garage with Tracker.
Another 15 minutes goes by and here comes Chase.
I was like, okay, two out of four, that's 50%.
Maybe I can sleep in the basement.
So I go from the garage to the basement.
And then another 15, 20 minutes goes by.
I'm really getting concerned because I don't see Ranger or Scout.
But then Ranger comes back.
You know, Ranger and Scout, once again, they do nothing without each other.
So I was concerned.
I was like, whew, where's Scout?
And I have to come back with all four because the next four days, it's going to be like
Antarctica in Kentucky.
And I was thoroughly concerned.
I'm like, he won't survive that.
And when Derek says Antarctica.
Frozen.
It was expected to get in single digits where we live.
A little over zero for several days.
And our dogs, you know, Derek has tried to make them outdoor dogs, but our dogs sleep
in the house every night.
But they're still dogs.
They can handle it.
And so I was worried about his fur not being thick enough, you know, because he's not outside
all the time.
So you know, and I made Derek, he came home with the three and I had his tail.
I don't even know if I let him eat that night.
I told him, you better get back in this car and get out here and show me where you lost
my dog and let's go look for him.
All three of us.
It was me, you and London Rose.
Oh yeah, because London Rose is not, she don't play them games either.
And we were all, we were back in the Armada.
Back in the Marla.
And the Armada and we drove all the way up to the edge of the woods.
All the way to the back.
Yeah.
That's where he lost him at.
And there's a parking area there and then it's just trees and trees and trees.
So I wasn't silly.
I'm not going to say, hey, let's drive the truck down.
We weren't going to do that.
So we stopped in the parking lot.
You learned your lesson from that.
But it was pitch black.
Like you couldn't barely see your hands in front of your face.
And then that's when I had a thought like, Ooh, this could go left real fast.
Cause what if like an alien or some kind of monster.
Jason's out there.
So it looked like we were in Crystal Lake somewhere.
It really did.
And I was like, man, we can go missing and no one would know.
Cause we're all the way back in the cut.
But I didn't care.
You know, Derek got out, he brought some dog food.
Left a blanket.
He left a blanket, left some of his clothes, put some food out for him.
And he never showed.
We did the whole, hiya, hiya, hiya thing.
We stayed out there at least an hour and a half.
It was about two hours.
We sat in that truck calling for him.
Nothing.
And then we had to leave.
We had to leave.
It was getting late.
And of course I couldn't sleep.
We get up and I wait, you know, till the sun to come out.
And I learned my lesson from the time I got stuck in the mud.
But I also made, on the second day, I made a recording.
This day on day one.
This day on, that's right.
Because we go out.
We go out with all the dogs.
All the dogs.
We bring all the dogs.
And what you guys don't understand is when a beagle barks out in the woods, their voices
echoes.
It's really loud.
It's very loud and it travels far.
And we stayed out there all the way until it started snowing.
We were out there a good four hours.
Yes.
And the dogs jumped a rabbit.
And that was my hope that they would jump a rabbit and Scout would come from out the
bushes or something.
But that didn't work.
Yeah.
Scout didn't show up and we stayed out there.
And then we found signs of Scout.
We think we found where he slept.
You know, because he was leaving like little traces of himself, if that makes sense.
He had like little paw prints and things like that.
And it started snowing so we had to leave.
And you know.
And it started snowing hard and fast.
It did.
The snow came down really fast because that was the time when it snowed in our area so
fast that the interstate kind of shut down.
And we got trapped on the interstate.
So from this training location, it's about 45 minutes max from the house.
And on the way back because of the snow.
It took us almost three hours.
Yes.
It was a long drive.
We spent most of the time sitting on 75.
And that's part of the concern.
It was a lot of snow.
So we were worried that Scout was freezing to death now at this point.
And then the next day I had an idea that I would make a recording.
On day two.
Uh huh.
And I had a speaker and I made the recording like, hiya, hiya, hiya.
Come on Scout.
Come on boy.
Come on Scout.
Scout.
And I had this whole recording going and the recording looped for like two minutes.
It looped.
And I was like, here, just take this record and just play it and then play it through
the speakers.
I noticed you stayed at home while I was out in the snow.
Oh, I stayed home.
So I had to put on my snow gear.
He did.
I didn't have snow gear.
I live in Kentucky, but I don't have snow gear.
And so he had to go out there on his own.
And Derek stayed out there almost the whole day.
How long you stay out there?
I stayed out there at least three or four hours just walking and letting your recording
play and just, you know, looking for tracks.
And that's when I located tracks near where we left my stuff.
I was like, those are his prints.
Cause there's no one else out here and they're smaller than Cowardee prints.
They were his prints, you know, hindsight 2020.
I was like, he's been in the area.
He is still out here.
So that gave me hope.
But I was like, where did he go?
Yeah, cause now by this time we were at eight, I think it was like eight degrees.
And that was probably the high for that day.
Yeah, it was freezing.
And I just knew that when Derek came home without my dog and he brought the recording
back, I knew, I said, he's gone.
And I started, you know, to mourn him and make my peace and cry and get all that stuff
out of me.
So he was gone for three days at this point.
That's the longest any of them.
This is, this is day two.
Day three, I go back out again.
Okay.
Day three, I go out again and I drive around the neighborhood and there's a campsite right
across the street.
And I went to the campsite.
Hey, have you seen this little dog?
No, we haven't seen any dogs.
Who's out in this weather?
Is what the lady asked me.
I'm like, well, this happened a couple of days ago.
I'm like, well, you should be at home.
So I drive down a little ravine.
There's another small neighborhood and I knocked on, I did one of your moves.
I knocked on the door and it's like, no sir, I hadn't seen your dog.
So I went back to the property and I just walked the property again for another two
or three hours.
And this on day three, I saw no signs of nothing.
I didn't see bird tracks, coyote tracks.
I saw nothing.
I didn't even see his old tracks.
And that's when I realized, I think, you know, he didn't make it.
Because that night it got really cold, like negative five with the wind chill.
I said, there's no way he survived that.
There's just no way.
Like three days of this weather, he didn't survive.
And Scout is, he was not the run of the litter, but he is definitely the smallest of the four.
He's husky.
He's a husky one.
And he's greedy.
He's thick.
He's a thick one.
But I just knew he was gone.
And me and London.
At the end of day three is when you start to mourn.
Yep.
And you know, we started to prepare ourselves and he's not coming home.
And then Derrick gets up the fourth day.
I'm going to look one more day, one more time.
And I was like, he ain't, he not there.
Like, all right, go ahead and go.
And Derrick went out there.
I leave the house about 9 a.m.
And I took my time because like it's freezing cold.
The roads are still bad.
I stopped at the pilot and got me a McDonald's biscuit and something.
Good grief.
I was hungry.
So I make my way down the little trail and I'm just driving.
I'm driving.
And then I get closer and closer to where we lost them.
And I pull up and I see this little tricolor beagle just sitting there looking at these
two hunters.
I'm like, is that Scout?
And he's just sitting there.
He's sitting there like he's involved in their conversation.
I'm like, shouldn't this dog be looking for me?
And I pull up and I get closer and closer and I look and it's Scout.
So on day four, I pull up and he's just waiting.
He's just chilling.
Sitting with these strangers.
Sitting with these strangers like he knows them.
And I'm like, why didn't they call?
What were the strangers doing?
Just chilling, sitting on the back of their pickup truck.
Having a conversation.
He was sitting there in the middle of it like he knew what they were talking about.
Like one dude would say something, he would look at him.
Then the other guy would start talking and he would look at him.
I'm like, what is he doing?
Like shouldn't he be like, you know, looking for me?
Like he's just sitting there waiting like, hey guys, come on, pick me up, put me in this
truck.
I'm ready to go home.
I'll go with you guys.
These other people left me.
That's the way he looked like, hey, okay, you guys don't see me.
So what happened when you walked up to these people?
I didn't even get a chance.
I opened the door.
He looked.
He just ran and jumped in the truck.
I didn't even get a chance to speak to these dudes.
I opened the door and when I opened that door, he looked and he just ran and jumped in the
truck.
Got in the back of the truck.
And I was like, how long has he been around?
He's like, he's been around here all morning running rabbits.
All morning?
Yeah.
He was like, he's been up here all morning running rabbits, ruining our deer hunt.
I was like, oh, my bad.
And I was like, well, you guys weren't going to call?
We figured all these cars, he belonged to somebody out here.
I was like, oh, well, okay.
Good thought process.
But still, when you pulled up this morning, because he told me, when we pulled up this
morning, he was running the rabbit.
And they were the first ones out there.
He said, we were the first ones out here.
I'm like, well.
If he was running a rabbit, there's no cars.
You should have known there were no cars out here.
He was out here by himself.
But some people don't care.
Yeah, because he has, like I said, our numbers are on his collar.
So I was a little perturbed when Derrick first told me that, but I was very, very happy because
Derrick FaceTimed me.
He tried to do the whole thing, well, I couldn't find him thing.
It didn't last long because he ended up FaceTiming me.
It's like Derrick never FaceTimed.
And he shows me Scout laying there.
So when he gets Scout home, Scout is in bad shape.
He ripped up his thigh and his horse.
Like his bark is like.
Yeah, because that dude was hunting the whole time.
Yeah, that's how he sound.
And he was angry at his brothers.
When we brought him home, we brought the boys, we brought his brothers in to see him.
The boys all spread out.
They spread out in the living room, one at each corner, and Scout barged at every last
one of them.
And they all just kind of moved to their own wall and just stared at him.
And they tried to creep up on him.
And he just, woo.
Maybe it was like a Mexican standoff.
I don't know.
It was like they were just standing there.
It was so like he was telling them off.
Now you know, Scout has a special bond with Ranger.
Now he did bark at Ranger, but he did let Ranger creep up enough to sniff him and lay
with him.
But the other two, Tracker and Chase, they couldn't get close to him at all.
He was angry.
So when we got him to the vet, we find out that he contracted Lyme disease.
Don't know how, in the middle of the winter?
Well, he must have had it at some point.
And it was identified then.
Like I said, he tore open his inside thigh.
So he got some antibiotics for that.
He got some antibiotics.
He has, you know, they gave him a special diet because he lost weight.
He liked it because he got to stay in the house for a week.
All by himself.
We made them other jokers sleeping in the garage.
He was like, I'm the baby now.
We put him by the fire.
Because my thing is whenever one of the dogs go missing, they get to lay in front of the
fireplace.
Treat him like a baby.
And they have their blankets and their toys.
And so he was spoiled for the week.
The crazy part about it is this man survived that.
And we always say, if I had one wish, I think I would use it on that.
I want him to tell me what happened.
Yes.
I want him to give me 45 minutes where he can speak and tell me what happened, why he
was gone.
Yeah.
It would be amazing.
What did he eat?
Like how did he?
How did he survive the temperatures?
It was freezing in the snow.
And we got, I think it was like 10 inches, maybe 11 inches of snow.
It was a lot.
Almost a foot of snow.
Almost taller than him.
It probably, yeah.
In some places.
Some places it probably was.
And then you can have a factor in the wind chill.
The wind was blowing.
I think one night it got to negative 10, something like that, and he was out in the woods.
That is amazing that he survived that.
No food, no shelter.
The water was frozen.
It was frozen.
So he had no water.
Like how did this dude survive?
We do not know.
But then after he came home, we started to really observe Scout.
And like we said before, Scout is the one that can open up cages.
He's the one that's always watching you and learning.
He's the one that catches bats.
Catches bats and catches birds.
He done caught two bats in the past week.
The past two weeks he caught a bat.
He catches birds.
He's poop goodness.
So maybe he survived by being a predator.
Being a baby wolf.
Because every time I look up, he's killing something in our backyard.
And I'm like, how is it that he can kill stuff in those other three camps?
Maybe he got trained by a coyote while he was in the woods.
He became part of the pack.
I just want to know what happened.
We need to make a Disney movie about Scout's survival.
It'll take place in the Yukon of Alaska.
Oh my gosh.
We're going to make it all.
A beagle?
We're going to make it all.
We're going to make it happen.
He getting fish out the river too?
He going to be hanging out with bears.
Oh gosh.
He going to be hanging out with mountain lions, leopards.
And somehow we're going to put a lion in this movie.
Oh boy.
No, baby.
This is an amazing story.
The survival of Scout.
Scout is a survivor.
Would y'all watch that?
I would.
I would watch that, no doubt.
But that's Scout's survival episode.
Scout the survivor.
All right, you guys.
Until next time.
We'll talk to y'all later.
If you made it this far, you are the true champion.
You could have been anywhere, doing anything, but you instead chose to spend your time with
us.
And for that, we say thank you.
I'm Derek.
I'm Makayla.
Rate, like, and subscribe.
Do good, be good.
Until next time.