Local animal lovers catch Celebration Pointe dog after 4 years lost 

Over the weekend, a group of Gainesville animal lovers caught a stray dog they had been chasing for months. 

Some knew the dog as Salsa, the name Haile’s Angels gave him when they rescued him from a hoarding situation four years ago. Others knew him as the little brown dog that roamed the woods around Celebration Pointe. Those who worked to trap him knew him as Scrappy, because his skittish nature made him hard to catch. 

In April 2020, Brittany Rohl and her boyfriend, Steven Prendes, were fostering Scrappy, or “Salsa,” and another dog called Bell Pepper, both of which Haile’s Angels had rescued from a hoarding situation. Both dogs were highly anxious and stayed mostly in a pen inside the house. 

Rohl said both dogs often went to the bathroom inside the house, but she was trying to take them outside to do their business so they could learn better habits, making them more adoptable. 

One day when Rohl took them outside, she said the dog bolted, yanking the leash from her hand. She dropped her other dog’s leash and ran after him, but the little Chihuahua mix was gone. 

Rohl said she looked for “Salsa” for months, thinking he had probably gone into a wooded area near her home around Celebration Pointe. She took food out, called his name, and tried with and without other dogs in tow. 

“I didn’t know how common it was for foster dogs to run away, and I beat myself up about it a lot at first,” Rohl said in a phone interview. “And it’s not just dogs that come from hoarding situations, which is where they came from, but over time I realized that it makes sense. He was scared.” 

Rohl thought he probably would not go far, and she was right. Scrappy stayed around Celebration Pointe, and months after Rohl had given up hope of finding him she heard from the rescue that some construction workers would see him in the trees and throw him scraps. 

When the dog first ran away, Rohl’s boyfriend had notified Gainesville Pet Finder, a Facebook page created to get word out about lost animals. Though reports of sightings floated around groups of animal lovers for years, no one managed to catch him, earning him the new name “Scrappy.” 

In late September 2023, Jenn Hart stumbled across some Scrappy-related Facebook chatter. She said she thought reports of the same dog wandering Celebration Pointe for years were exaggerated. Surely, he had only been there for months, a year at most, she thought. 

Still, Hart and two other animal lovers began to follow up on a recent sighting of a little brown dog. 

Some confusion ensued because the recent sighting was a different dog, not Scrappy. Then Kelli Scarratt, one of the animal lovers who had been following sightings with Hart, saw Scrappy herself. Hart said Scarratt’s sighting cemented for them that there was another dog, that Scrappy was not just a rumor. 

“I was like, ‘you know what, we’re gonna just long game this Scrappy situation,” Hart said in a phone interview. “And I’m pretty determined. I love animals, so I’m like, ‘I am the one for the job.’ I will not give up. There’s zero chance. I’m fixated at this point.” 

Hart bought a trail camera and set it up near where Scrappy was last seen, in the big patch of woods near Celebration Pointe’s South parking garage. She and the other two women started by leaving dog food by the camera every day. 

At some point, the third member of the group was unable to keep helping, so Scarratt began reaching out to more animal lovers. At the height of the operation, Scarratt was organizing feeding turns for six women, sometimes recruiting her adult daughter to fill in if someone was sick or otherwise unable to go by the trail camera on their assigned day. 

About a month after the group started leaving food out, Scrappy showed up on camera to eat. The group was excited, Hart said, and eventually, Scrappy’s appearances grew more frequent: about once a week, then twice a week, then almost every day. 

Finally, the group was ready to lay a trap. Hart said she was nervous about the trap because others had tried to trap Scrappy at least once, if not twice before. He had escaped the traps. 

Hart said she made sure the trap was high quality before purchasing, then the group started out slow, using a bungee cord to hold the trap open. They left Vienna sausage in the trap and kept it bungeed open for at least a month to get Scrappy comfortable. 

Once the dog was going all the way to the back of the trap for the sausage, the group knew it was time. They knew Hart would be fostering, so they waited until a weekend when she would have time off to take Scrappy home and spend time with him immediately. 

Within an hour of setting the trap, Scrappy was caught. 

Hart took Scrappy home and said she was amazed at how good he has been, and how well he has been acclimating to life with her other dogs. 

“I was like, ‘oh gosh, what is going to happen when we get him home?’” Hart said. “Is he gonna bite us or, pee everywhere, or be crazy? And he’s not. He’s so sweet and soft and gentle. He’s just scared.” 

Scarratt said she thinks four years of roaming outside may have given Scrappy time to calm down from his nervousness, because he did not panic when the trap closed on him, and he is already going on walks and settling onto dog beds with Hart’s other dogs. 

“It’s amazing,” Scarratt said in a phone interview. “Considering he hasn’t been with an owner for almost four years, I think it’s amazing.” 

Hart said the Humane Society of North Central Florida is sponsoring Scrappy while she fosters, and once he is better adjusted, he will be up for adoption. She said for now he is “special needs,” and she is careful when taking him on walks. 

“I’m relieved for him,” Rohl, who originally fostered “Salsa,” said. “My aunt has a dog that was really, really abused. And it’s taken like six years but it’s starting to feel safe. And so, I have hope that Salsa can also start to feel safe and live the rest of his life in a loving, safe home that’s indoors.”