KAREN LAND

Last winter, deep snow and thick ice kept the fair-weather walkers off of my favorite hiking trail in Indianapolis. I could always count on running into one other diehard on the path though; a woman - wearing ski gaiters, pac boots, ice cleats,  and a down overcoat - moved in slow motion next to her arthritic Weimaraner.

One morning, as my pack of three dogs mingled with her hound, the woman and I struck up a conversation.

Within minutes, we discovered a connection of both place and purpose.

“It was always our dream to move to Montana after we retired,” the woman explained, as she rubbed her old dog’s ears. “Unfortunately, my husband and I weren’t in Kalispell very long before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. We stayed as long as we could, and then we decided to return to Indy to be close to family...”

Last Thursday morning when I sat down to my computer, multiple e-mails with the subject header, “Have you seen Melanie Gould?” filled my inbox.

The news was disturbing. Melanie Gould, a fellow Iditarod musher, was missing from her home in Talkeetna, Alaska, and had been since May 31st.

Very little information was provided in the articles, but one specific detail made my heart sink - Melanie’s 12 dogs were found at home alone. Like her friends who set up a Facebook page to coordinate information between the public and search teams, I couldn’t imagine Melanie leaving her dogs without making any provisions for their care - this was a very bad sign.

I felt helpless reading about Melanie’s disappearance from thousands of miles away at my parents’ home in Indianapolis. For two days, I checked the public Facebook page often, hoping for some positive news.