After Damian vanished on May 4, 2017, his father celebrated the occasions he had imagined they would share for over seven years. Without Damian, Paul Guilbeault completed his relocation from Massachusetts to Arizona, established a new life close to Phoenix, changed careers to photography, met and married his future husband.
Even though Guilbeault felt depressed when he looked at the pictures of him, they remained up.
He answered, “Because that’s my family.”
Guilbeault, now 43, had come to terms with the seemingly inevitable conclusion after 2,813 days: Damian was dead, either due to a negligent motorist or an opportunistic predator.
Day 2,814 then arrived, along with a text message from an unidentified number informing him that he had been located.
“Shut the front door!” I said. Guilbeault recalled uttering.
After almost eight years, his tiny Doberman Pinscher was almost run over and then discovered.
Paul Guilbeault and Damian in 2016, the year before Damian escaped and fled Guilbeault in Oklahoma City. IMPORTANT CREDIT: Guilbeault, PaulGuilbeault, Paul
The beginning of a new life is heartbreak.
Around 2012, when Damian was six months old, Guilbeault took him in. When Guilbeault went to pick up the dog, he was instantly enchanted by Damian’s love and extravagant antics, even though he had committed to assist a friend by fostering the dog for a few days. He chose to retain him.
Guilbeault made the decision to relocate from Haverhill, Massachusetts, to Mesa, Arizona, in 2017. With the assistance of his father and a friend, he packed his life into a U-Haul and set off west as Damian rode in the front truck between laps.
The travelers stopped in Oklahoma City around two-thirds of the way through their 2,650-mile journey and checked into a motel for the night.
Guilbeault took five-year-old Damian on a leash and he and his companion strolled down a frontage road next to the hotel. Guilbeault and Damian fought for ten minutes. Guilbeault, concerned for their safety, kept dragging Damian back onto the grass when he insisted on strolling in the road since he preferred asphalt. Guilbeault screamed at Damian for being so obstinate when he attempted to return to the street for the hundredth time.
Damian had a fit when confronted, wriggling out of his collar and running away. Guilbeault and his companion pursued, but Damian outran them. Before long, he vanished.
When they were unable to find anything in the region where the dog had gone, Guilbeault, his father, and his buddy began to explore elsewhere. At dusk, Guilbeault saw what appeared to be Damian’s fur flash and told his father to halt the U-Haul vehicle. After exiting the truck, he sprinted around the rear and nearly collided with a mountain lion before quickly running away. Nevertheless, they continued their hunt until his father advised him to go to bed at around one in the morning.
What started out as an overnight stop ended up being a week-long adventure.
The three travelers rallied the hotel staff after a fit of tears. They assisted Guilbeault in creating flyers about the missing dog and printed pictures of Damian.
The search and rescue team established a routine: Guilbeault posted pleas and pictures of Damian on Facebook groups for lost pets, while his father and a friend hung flyers and conducted a physical search for the boy. Sometimes, when Guilbeault searched outside, the image of the mountain lion loomed in his head.
“I was searching for a bloody red sweater half the time,” he claimed.
However, they didn’t even discover that.
The team gave up the hunt after a week due to the rising expenses of the food, moving truck, and hotel room. Guilbeault devastated Oklahoma City.
He said, “I was devastated.”
You must also move on.
After arriving in Arizona, Guilbeault periodically searched the internet for any indication of Damian, but his efforts eventually waned. Guilbeault assumed that the mountain lion they had encountered had either driven him over or picked him up by a bystander. In any case, he assumed he would never again see Damian.
He said, “That’s my failure.” Until I located the dog or a body, I ought to have [searched] daily.
However, he noted, you also need to go on with your life.
In Arizona, Guilbeault did actually begin a new life. After undergoing back surgery, he had to change careers to photography because it allowed him to work from a wheelchair if necessary and with less movement. He used his new career to organize art events. As a result, he met Julian, his future spouse, in 2022; the two were married on Valentine’s Day of last year. He also acquired two new dogs: Petra, a hybrid of an Arctic wolf, malamute, and border collie, who gave birth to two daughters, Persephone and Mystique, and Percy, a Jack Russell terrier, who passed away.
Months had grown into years, and weeks into months.
The Little Man
Then, on January 15, he received a call when he and Julian were traveling from Mesa to Southern California with their car loaded with clothing and other items to aid those affected by the wildfires in the Los Angeles area. Guilbeault sent it to voicemail on his Apple Watch as he was driving. In short order, he received multiple others from the same number, all of which suffered the same fate as the first. He received a text message from the enigmatic number approximately ten minutes later.
It stated that Damian, his dog, had been located.
Guilbeault thought it was a joke or a fraud, so he had Julian phone the number while he was still behind the wheel. Someone had located Damian and used his microchip to locate Guilbeault, according to an American Kennel Club Reunite representative on the other end. He was given the phone number of the man who was caring for him by the representative.
Guilbeault checked to make sure the route was clear about an hour from the Arizona-California border before making a U-turn to return east on Interstate 10. They arrived at Ricki Chambers’ door fourteen hours later, and he gave them the narrative on how Damian ended up in his care.
Guilbeault was informed by Chambers, 62, that his sister had almost driven the dog over on New Year’s Eve while traveling down a four-lane highway. When she stopped, got out of her car, and attempted to pick him up, she was greeted by barks that sounded like cries and biting attempts.
Still, she grabbed and held him. She brought her 150-pound dog to Chambers because she was concerned about how he would treat Damian. Chambers claimed that the dog’s nails were overgrown and had just begun to curl under themselves, and that he could see some of the ribs.
But according to Chambers, he appeared to be in good health. Someone must have been taking care of him because he wasn’t smelling awful.
Chambers had the dog s nails cut, fed him well and, above all, gave him love – treated him like he was one of my own. He began referring to him as Little Man. The dog had free range of the backyard and lay beside Chambers on the couch – a bit of a salve for Chambers who had been desperately searching for his own lost dog, Carolina, after she disappeared the week before.
Work and weather thwarted Chambers s plans to take his new charge to the vet, but after two weeks, he got him there. The vet found a microchip that led him back to Guilbeault.
I knew that dog didn t belong to me, Chambers said. I was just glad to reunite them two.
Guilbeault called Chambers minutes after learning Damian had been found. Chambers sent him proof-of-life photos and told Guilbeault he would be at his home in Oklahoma City to receive them no matter the time.
About 14 hours later, he made good on that promise, welcoming the Guilbeaults into his home about 5 a.m. Damian had developed cataracts since the two last met, so it took him a few moments to notice Guilbeault and realize who he was.
But Chambers said their connection and history was unmistakable, even to an outsider.
When he came in and sat down with Damian, he said. I knew that was the owner.
–By Jonathan Edwards, The Washington Post
