Arizona Rancher

 

 Arizona Rancher Details How His Hero Dog Protected a Missing 2-Year-Old Boy 

On April 15, a two-year-old Arizona toddler was led to safety by a rancher’s dog after the boy spent a night alone in the remote wilderness. 

“When I was driving out the driveway, I noticed my dog was sitting down by the entrance, and I looked up and this little kid was standing there with my dog,” Arizona rancher Scotty Dunton said. “Knowing he was the missing child, it was a relief that he was alive.” 

Yavapai County Sheriff’s deputies received a report of a missing boy who “wandered” from his home. The response, involving over 40 search and rescue members, ended after 16 hours when Bodin Allen appeared on Dunton’s property. The child traveled approximately 7 miles from his home. During the search, a rescue helicopter spotted two mountain lions in the area where the boy had travelled. 

“I can’t believe that kid made it that far,” Dunton said in the interview. “It’s 7 miles and that’s just if you walked in a straight line.” 

He added: “There are three big mountain ranges between here and his house, and big valleys, and for a two-year-old to do that, it’s insane.” 

Buford, Duton’s Anatolian Pyrenees, was performing his duties the night of Allen’s disappearance. According to Duton, the canine is a “guardian dog, so he just kind of patrols within a half mile of the house all night and keeps coyotes away.” 

After the rancher brought the boy into his house, gave him some water, and got him to calm down, he asked about the events of the night before. 

“Did you walk all night?” Dunton recalled asking the child. 

“I laid up under a tree,” the toddler allegedly told him. 

“Did my dog find you? And he goes ‘yep,'” Dunton remembered. 

“He just brought him home,” Dunton said. “It’s what he does. He loves kids, so I couldn’t imagine he wouldn’t leave him when he found him.”