Loose Dog Ends Up in the School’s Main Entrance

A ‘big white dog’ ended up in the school’s main entrance around 9:30 a.m. on January 30 when Officer Ostdiek, the HHS resource officer, was able to get the dog to go into the main entrance bubble so she and another officer could capture the dog after it had been wandering near the school’s main entrance.

The dog, which started out on the South side of town, was first reported by Hastings police around 6 a.m. that morning. The dog made its way through town before stopping near the high school circle drive a few hours later.  

“So [the dog] made his way clear up to here and he was hanging out around here so kids kept messing with him and the dog got agitated, so we decided that we needed to contain him just so nobody gets hurt or anything like that,” the school resource officer, Emily Ostdiek said.

Two different police officers tried to catch the dog between the time it was first reported and when it made its way to the south side of the high school, but the dog wouldn’t let the officers get close enough to catch it. When the dog made its way to the area in front of the entrance, Officer Ostdiek decided to try to catch the dog. 

“[My initial thoughts were] too much that I wanted to pet the dog but that it probably needed to be caught just because I’d heard other officers all morning long and the dog wouldn’t let them catch it, so it needed to be contained,” Officer Ostdiek said.

Officer Ostdiek tried to lure the dog with a treat but quickly realized that the dog wouldn’t let her get near him, so she called for a couple other officers and was able to get the dog to go into the main entrance bubble. Once a few other police officers got to the school, Officer Ostdiek tried to capture the dog with a catchpole while another officer made sure no one went in or out of the doors. 

“So the dog was in the [bubble] and I could hear it barking and there were these cops with those long sticks that they put the rope around the dog’s neck and make sure it’s distanced, and I thought it would be a scary dog, but when they brought it out it was cute and fluffy…,” senior Cynthia Carlson said.

Officer Ostdeik and another officer loaded the dog into the back of Officer Ostdeik’s police car and brought it to Heartland Pet Connection where they found and reunited it with its owner.

“…It seemed really nice. It wasn’t barking or anything, I think it was just scared. It was wagging its tail, had its tongue out and all that when it came out and then it just jumped into the back of the cop car,” Carlson said.

Looking back on what happened, Carlson wasn’t mad about being late to class, especially because she thought the reason she was late was funny.

“I honestly thought it was funny because I was like, late to class because a dog was stuck in the school. When I told my mom that I was late to school, because they called her and told her that I was late, and I had an unexcused temporarily, my mom didn’t believe me that I was late to school because there was a dog in the school,” Carlson said.