AMHERST — For nearly a week, close to 100 volunteers dedicated their days and nights to searching for Gnocchi, a husky mix hit by a vehicle on West Street in South Amherst late on the afternoon of Nov. 9.
On Saturday, the effort paid off when the 50-pound dog, mostly black with a white chest and large ears, was located in an area off Pomeroy Court, having suffered some injuries, but with a prognosis for a full recovery, according to owner Dan Levine.
“It’s breathtaking, overwhelming, the extent to which this community rallied,” Levine says. “It was not just our friends, our acquaintances, but really the whole community.”
Levine and Theresa Ryan, who run Amherst Farmers Market staple CremeBrule.LA, were on a vacation to Disneyland with their son to celebrate his birthday, when they initially learned Gnocchi had eaten the boots of their experienced dog sitter.
Several hours later, Gnocchi slipped out from the property when the latch on the front gate wasn’t secured, after a friend dropped by to visit the dog sitter. While Gnocchi had escaped before, she always stayed in the neighborhood off West Street, Levine said. This time, though, she went in the other direction, entering the state highway and being hit by a sedan and going fully under the vehicle.
After the impact, Gnocchi ran off into the dark, but was sighted 18 hours after the initial incident, in the area of Pomeroy Lane, giving her owners some confidence they could be reunited.
Levine and Ryan took a red eye flight back from California for Thursday morning, by then close to giving up since there had been no sightings for several days, but also aware that she could survive in the cold weather.
On multiple platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, the couple disseminated information, and also put out posters with information about the dog, encouraging door knocking and people to look for Gnocchi in footage from Ring door cameras and trail cameras, some of which captured other animals. Drones also went up.
On Saturday, one of their son’s teachers at Wildwood Elementary School called to say that Gnocchi was sitting near a trail off Pomeroy Court. Levine and Ryan arrived with treats.
After 30 seconds she stood up and then another 30 seconds she moved cautiously toward the food, Levine said. Then she ran straight to the couple.
“After she nearly licked the skin off of the rescuers and us, we brought her home,” Levine said.
Ryan brought Gnocchi to the South Deerfield Veterinary Clinic after eight hours, where veterinarians evaluated her and found no broken bones. She did have a bad gash on one leg, had some ticks on her, had lost 5 pounds, and the pads on her paws were scraped with other minor lacerations.
“No broken bones, no internal damage, but she’s a little skittish,” Levine said.
Assistance was also provided by Better Together Dog Rescue, the Leverett-based site where Gnocchi was adopted, and Missing Dogs Massachusetts.
Levine said now the family is doing what they can to dog proof the home, adding and reinforcing gates, adding an AirTag duct-taped to her collar and they will soon get a Wi-Fi GPS collar.
“It is an incredibly dark time for the country, and for the world at large,” Levine said. “This is a story of coming together and the extent of the community coming through.”