Kai, the puppy who wouldn’t be caught, captures hearts

There’s nothing like a stray puppy to pull Oak Cliff neighbors together.

Christy Nielson of Kessler Park noticed a wretched little mutt in a field near Sylvan and Singleton while on her way to an appointment one day last year.

On the return trip, she stopped to look for the puppy and didn’t see it, but she couldn’t stop thinking about it. So she got on the neighborhood social media site Nextdoor and found that several of her neighbors had mentioned they’d seen the same puppy, too. She started chatting online with her neighbor Anna Duke-Bettin, whom she’d never met before, and they decided to go look for the pup.

The two of them took turns on a feeding schedule for the stray in hopes of gaining its trust so they could capture it. They also chatted up the guys who worked at an ad- jacent truck yard. It took about two weeks, but those guys are the ones who eventually caught the dog, and they called Nielson to come get it.

Nielson, who is a volunteer with streetdog rescue nonprofit Duck Team 6, already had a 14-year-old black lab and a 5-year-old border collie. She and her husband were wary of adopting a third dog.

“You think three isn’t that different from two, but it is. Three is a lot different than two,” she says.

But the dog, which turned out to be a female they named Kai, was too sweet. Her underdog status was too irresistible. So they welcomed her into the fold anyway.

She had a lot of bad habits including digging, jumping and getting into the trash.

But her “big brother,” the border collie, Kodi, sets a good example.

“She saw Kodi doing the right things, and she learned from him,” Nielson says. “He was her mentor. She still feels more comfortable and more confident with him around.”

Duke-Bettin trains working dogs, so she offered tips to the Nielsons, including keeping Kai on a 20-foot leash around the house. That way they can correct her by pulling the leash instead of using physical touch or verbal corrections. That eliminated the negativity Kai associated with humans while still allowing them to train her, Nielson says.

Besides having a great addition to their pet family, the Nielsons also have great new friends. Duke-Bettin and her husband have become some of the Nielsons’ best neighborhood buds.

“She’s been awesome because she’s a trainer, and she’s also a good friend,” Nielson says.