Spencer the Dog’s Great Escape

Kylee Sanders 

Junior Editor

On January 27, Vice-Chancellor Rob Pearigen and his wife, Phoebe Pearigen, discovered that their dog, Spencer, had escaped from their home, Chen Hall. When Mrs. Pearigen woke up that morning and came downstairs, she noticed that the house was extremely cold and then realized their back door was open and had been all night. “We just knew Spencer was gone,” Pearigen said. “Whenever there’s a door open, he’s gone.”

Even though they knew it was not likely he was in their home still, they briefly searched the house for him. They did not find him, so they decided they were going to go up and down University Avenue to call for him. There was still no sign of him, though. Since they could not find him anywhere near their home, they got into separate cars and began driving around campus. They looked and called for him around residence halls, Abbo’s Alley, and numerous other places. “We were terrified that he was gone forever. We could just see him falling off Morgan’s Steep chasing deer,” Pearigen explained. “We were imagining him gone forever.” 

Pearigen decided to drive out to the house they had on Sherwood Road when they lived here before he became Vice-Chancellor. “It’s about three miles from here,” he explained. “I didn’t think he could find his way out there, but I thought he knows that place better than he knows the campus. Still no Spencer, though.” He then checked his phone since he had not checked it all morning and finds a message from student Elizabeth Jefferson (C ’27). Jefferson and another student Gray Hackinson (C ’27) had spotted Spencer during the night, knew who he was, and brought him to Chen Hall. “They had rang the doorbell, but our doorbell hasn’t been working so it didn’t wake us up,” Pearigen said. Fortunately, they discovered that the sunroom door was unlocked and were able to put Spencer in there. 

“I called Phoebe and told her, ‘Spencer’s in the sunroom.’ The whole time we were looking around for him, he was watching us run around the house! He could’ve barked, but no, he just sat in his little chair, watching all of this going on,” Pearigen said. “While we spent hours looking for him, he had been at the house all along. We’re very, very, very grateful for our students who were kind enough to figure out that this dog didn’t need to be out on his own in the middle of the night and knew who he was and brought him back.”

Before his return to Chen Hall, Spencer got to go on an adventure around campus. While Jefferson was hanging out in the common room of her dorm, a student walked in saying there was a dog outside of the Vice-Chancellor’s house that had taken her hat and wouldn’t give it back to her. “I have four dogs at home and they take my stuff all the time, so I was like, ‘I can deal with this,’” Jefferson explained. When she came out to help, she realized that it was Spencer since she and the Vice-Chancellor had discussed him before at the Christmas party at Chen Hall last semester. She got him to drop the hat by waving a stick at him, which he then took instead. “I knew we needed to find a way to get him inside because I knew he wasn’t supposed to be out this late. So, I grabbed one of my guy friends, Gray, to pick him up and carry him since he wouldn’t follow me to the house,” Jefferson said. She and Hackinson tried ringing the doorbell a couple of times as mentioned and tried to open the front door to slide Spencer in, but it was locked. That’s when they decided to try the sunroom door, which was unlocked, and they were able to get Spencer back inside. 

After returning Spencer, Jefferson was told by numerous people that Spencer had made his rounds on the frat houses. There’s no telling where else Spencer went during the night either. When asked about his night adventure, he only happily panted and wagged his tail, revealing no details of what occurred. It must have been a fun adventure, though, since he was so pleased with himself.