Coach’s Free Spirit Companion, Maggie, Missing

BRISTOL, Va. – The first thing Sharon Johnson did when she got home from her husband’s hospice bed – an hour after he died – was ask “Where’s Maggie?”
Her mother and sister-in-law, in town to help her bury her husband, told her the family’s beloved hound dog left hours before and never came home.
Some think Maggie went looking for her father, Bob Johnson, Emory & Henry College’s head basketball coach, who died Aug. 22 at the Wellmont Hospice in Bristol, Tenn., after a three-year battle with kidney and liver cancer.
“I think she sensed Bob was dying and that things had changed in the house,” sobbed Sharon Johnson, a retired Virginia High School Spanish and French teacher. “I just alternate tears between my husband and his dog.”
But she has hope: Maggie was spotted in downtown Bristol, 26 miles from home, over the weekend.
Paul Russo, a family friend and Johnson’s replacement as head coach at E&H, described the 2-year-old dog as a free spirit. She went to work with Bob Johnson nearly every day, ran around campus chasing squirrels and when she was ready for a nap, she howled at the doors of the athletic center until someone let her in.
At home, she had a doggie door and came and went as she pleased, Johnson said. She roamed about the Johnsons’ property, about a mile from the college, sometimes for hours at a time. But she always returned, and slept in the couple’s bedroom every night.
“It’s the worst thing that could have possibly happened – Bob dying, coupled with the second worst thing that could have possibly happened,” Russo said. “Everybody knew Maggie, all over campus, you could hear her howling. There are a lot of people pulling for her.”
Johnson said Maggie endured four months of abuse and neglect before she came to their home.
Last April, the Johnsons’ yellow lab, Pete, died of cancer at the age of 9. They knew he’d be hard to replace.
They went to the Washington County Animal Shelter to look around.
“She was leaning up against the cage and you could see every bone in her body,” Johnson said. “The look in her eyes, it was like she had given up on life.”
The shelter was closed for a holiday weekend and four days later, they rushed in to scoop her up.
Four-month-old Maggie couldn’t even stand up.
Johnson said the puppy was abused, then just turned loose on the side of the road.
Her hip had been broken, so she still sits cocked a bit to the left.
“She made amazing progress,” Johnson said. “She’s slow to trust, she can be very skittish. But she turned out to be a wonderful companion.”
She hopes Maggie remembers how to survive on her own.
A half dozen people have called Johnson in the last several days to report Maggie sightings in Bristol. She was seen, skinny and terrified, on the Virginia Intermont College campus. She was spotted behind Lee Street Baptist Church, hiding under a van near the Corner Dog House on Mary Street, then darting across the Mary Street Bridge.
Finally, one VI student saw someone put her into the back of a black Chevy Silverado.
Meanwhile, Johnson has passed out fliers, taken out classified ads and sent mass e-mails. She’s visited every shelter in the region and is offering a generous reward to anyone who brings her dog home.
“If Maggie were here at least there would be some comfort,” she said.
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