For John and Lisa McDonald, their dog is a miracle, one that is reflected in her name: Grace.
“She was lost and is now found,” Lisa said. “ … From that point on, we knew Grace was going to be her name. She has transformed into this loving and trusting dog.”
Before that, Grace, an English yellow Labrador believed to be about 7 years old, was known as a ghost.
She spent weeks on the run in the summer of 2023, crossing interstates and major roads in the North Whitehall Township area, avoiding all the humans trying to rescue her.
She was finally caught two years ago, on Aug. 27, 2023, the day after National Dog Day.
“It’s just a true miracle that she wasn’t killed during the excursion or hit by a car,” Lisa McDonald said.
The McDonalds learned about Grace when Lisa came across a Facebook post about a Labrador on the run in the Schnecksville section of the township. Lisa said she immediately felt called to be of assistance since Grace was spotted in her neighborhood.
She and several other women, who became close friends over their efforts to catch the elusive dog, formed a WhatsApp group called “Finding Ghost.” They weren’t alone in the search.
“The whole community would call with a sighting and then we would all just get on the app and meet whether it was midnight or 2 a.m.,” Lisa said.
Megan Hersh was one of the searchers. She remembers seeing reports of Grace being spotted in Slatington and New Tripoli.
“I remember not being able to sleep and going out at 4 a.m. and driving around Luther Crest one of the first mornings and seeing her for the first time,” she said. “I did not try to approach her but even seeing my car she immediately ran into the woods. And that is how she would ghost us. For days we scoured tree lines and wooded areas, drove around asking people if they had seen her and alerting them, we also had someone let us borrow a drone to look for her, but the thing that helped us the most was all of the random sightings from the general public as well as ring camera footage of her overnight.”
The search seemed bleak at times, Lisa Semier of North Whitehall Township said.
“She was terribly scared and in flight mode although she seemed to have an attraction to other dogs. At that point she was traveling alone and it was looking dimmer every day that we would capture her in good health,” Semier said.
The rescue
About two months after the ghost dog was first spotted, John McDonald got a call from his wife while he was getting ready to play golf with his son: The dog had been sighted in west Allentown.
Lisa McDonald was not close enough but would meet up with John as soon as she could. “ ‘You need to go now,’ ” John recalled of his wife’s urgency. “I said, ‘OK, dear, I’ll go.’ ”
“We quick go back to my house,” John said. “We grab some food and some leashes. This gentleman saw Grace in his backyard in a patch of woods. Between four houses in a square and in the middle of that backyard square is this little patch of woods and she was sleeping in there. We asked him, ‘Please don’t try to get her. Don’t startle her.’ He said, ‘Oh, she’s not moving.’ And I thought, ‘I hope she’s not hurt.’ She was so exhausted that she was sleeping.”
Word got out and eventually a crowd of about 25 volunteers assembled, determined to help Grace. John sent his daughter-in-law to get 250 feet of snow fence, which a group of women held up to pen the dog in. Then John put bite gloves on and carefully moved in.
“Grace started trotting out of the woods and she started running full speed through these yards and she ran to one end of the fence and these ladies are all yelling,” he said. “‘I said, ‘Don’t drop the fence’ and they’re holding the fence up and she bounced off of that, and ran up to the other end of the fence.”
After a couple rounds of back and forth, Grace was cornered on a homeowner’s back porch. John recalled one rescuer noting Grace looked like she was about to bite. Instead, she surrendered.
“She just laid down on her side and didn’t move and I said, ‘That’s it guys, she just gave up,’ ” John said. “My son Tommy slipped a lead on her and I walked her out of the woods. Everybody was cheering and crying. We had a crate there so we wanted to get her into a crate to get her to the rescue and checked out. She was full of ticks and her eye looked bad and she looked like she was losing weight. She was exhausted and she did not bark, cry, complain or nip. She just was like the perfect little girl in this crate.”
From Ghost to Grace
First thing after she was rescued, Grace ate three big bowls of food. The dog — who John suspects was dumped by a breeder — wasn’t spayed, and had no collar or no microchip. No one claimed her after she was caught.
She had surgery to repair her eye lid, which was beginning to turn in, and the McDonalds, who own and operate Leader of the Pack Canine Institute, ended up fostering and then adopting her.
Even though Grace was on the mend, there were still challenges. She easily warmed up to females, including Lisa, but was apprehensive of men.
Earning her trust was a slow process. At first, John would feed Grace, only to have her take the food and walk away. She was on high alert, almost fearful, each time John got out of his recliner. Over time, though, they built a bond.
“She learned how to retrieve a ball and the bells went off in her mind that this is really going to be cool,” he said. “She loves to play, she loves to run, and she loves to play ball. It took me to walk her, to feed her, to spend time alone with her, and then to bond with her in an activity that she realized she really loved and now she’s my shadow.”
Two years later, the McDonalds say Grace is thriving and full of joy and energy. She helps train other dogs struggling with social skills and anxiety and leads a happy life.
“It had an amazing end. She is living her best life ever with John and Lisa,” Semier said.
Sunni Battin is a freelance writer.
