Thursday 6 February 2020

Help Find Otis

Cyclists: are you tired of Zwift yet this winter?  Are you looking to add meaning through a positive mission to your weekend?  You can move further and faster than walkers, and can go more places than cars.  You have a cell phone and a bike... thus you're qualified to join the swarm of eyes and ears that will be out on two wheels.

Please help find Otis.  Otis is a dog, aka man's best friend.  In this case, family's best friend.  Enough
said.
































































Otis has been missing since Jan 26, with many details outlined in this article.

If you're willing to dedicate some of your weekend miles to the cause, please:

Do:
- keep your eyes open, and ride every road, back road, trail and forest you can
- Call Conrad Gould with any sightings.  Please don't harass him.  He has published his number all over Springbank on missing dog signs.  403-870-3889.
- get a picture if you can
- try to get an exact location and time either verbally or via the pin feature on your phone's mapping capabilities
- paste the link to your Strava ride to this google doc, such that hopefully with some more helping horsepower, a heatmap can be added on where people have searched.  In the meantime, you could just browse the rides and sightings map below to see where more coverage could be added.  The dream would be to have strava have a "club heatmap" feature, so we could all join a "find Otis" club temporarily, which doesn't exist.  If anyone has a good tech solution here please contact me.

Do not:
- trespass
- call out the dog's name, as he's likely in a panic/survival state at this point
- chase or try to apprehend

REWARD
In addition to massive accruals of karma, undying devotion of canines across the planet, appreciation from a family, and that warm feeling that will well up inside you for redirecting just a few hours of your recreational hobby of riding bikes on the weekend to helping find Otis, I will brainstorm some incremental appropriate reward if he is found.  The owners appear to be suggesting similar.

Area:
Please see this map for lost and last seen points.  The truth at this point is its likely that Bow River to Elbow River, Highway 22 to Sarcee Trail are fair game, if not more.  There was one sighting in Wentworth.  As stated above, if people paste their rides (and any comments), it helps anyone who wishes to review rides target unswept areas.