Dog lost for 40 days after terror attack on Israel now comforts hostage family members
A dog who went missing for 40 days after the terror attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, is now providing comfort to multiple people in a remarkable turn of events.
Rebecca Geller, a British-Israeli woman who lives in Tel Aviv, Israel, told Fox News Digital that she awoke in a panic on Oct. 7, 2023, at 4:40 a.m. after having a nightmare about her "angelic" five-year-old rescue dog, Stevie.
At the time, Geller was in London, visiting friends and family. In her dream, Stevie had been bitten by a scorpion and was "in the desert, dying alone."
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She described how, the night before as well, she had a horrible dream that her dog had drowned.
Geller said she immediately texted her friend, Dana Avesar, who was taking care of Stevie with her boyfriend at his caravan in Talmei Yosef, a southern village in Israel, to find out if her dog was OK. Meanwhile, she saw a message from another friend that said, "Israel is under attack. You'd better delay your flight home."
Stevie the rescue dog, who went missing after the terror attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 in southern Israel, is shown at left. At right, Rebecca Geller and Stevie, along with Yoram Erez, founder of Preserving the Rights of Animals (PTROA), a nonprofit organization, on June 21, 2024. (Rebecca Geller)
Geller had been scheduled to fly back to Israel the next day.
She said that about an hour later, her friend texted her that there were sirens going off and loud booms — and that Stevie was missing.
"I realized they were in huge danger."
Avisar said she heard rumors that a group of dogs were seen leaving the village together. She and her boyfriend went out to look for Stevie a few times, she also said — but now it was too dangerous.
"I didn’t know what to do with myself," Geller recalled to Fox News Digital. "I was basically trying to stay calm, and I was trying not to drive them crazy because I realized they were in huge danger."
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Geller said she messaged everyone she knew from southern Israel, and learned that, fortunately, they were OK.
She started posting pictures and videos of Stevie on social media every day, drawing attention to a unique feature of his – a tiny, naturally grown mohawk on the top of his head, which she calls his "lucky tuft."
Stevie, on the right, is shown with his twin, Billie, at left. Rebecca Geller searched for her missing dog Stevie for over a month. (Rebecca Geller)
Geller said her friend offered to look for Stevie, and that’s when she realized she needed to search for him herself. She told her mother in London that she was sorry, but she had to go.
Her mother pleaded with her not to go — but "of course I didn’t listen," Geller said.
‘It was scary’
On Oct. 31, 2023, Geller traveled to southern Israel with her cousin and an armed volunteer from Paw Aid, formerly known as Dogs & Heroes, an Israeli volunteer organization that rescues and rehabilitates pets from war zones and natural disasters.
More than 1,000 dogs went missing after Oct. 7 — and roughly 700 of them have been found by rescue organizations.
"You needed military clearance … and you needed to go down with a weapon," she said.
They mapped out what route to take based on where the dogs had been spotted, and arranged for access to enter the guarded villages and kibbutzim.
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Geller said she left some of her laundry around the caravan and fields near where Stevie had been staying so that he could pick up her scent.
Geller also drove around the area alone.
"I had hundreds of posters in those plastic sleeves. I was putting them on gas stations, supermarkets … giving them to soldiers, anywhere that there was an intersection and a traffic light," she said.
Aviva Siegel with Stevie. Siegel, 63, is a grandmother who was held hostage for 51 days. She is still waiting for her husband, Keith, to be released. (Rebecca Geller)
She described the eeriness of the atmosphere. "It was winter and the days were really short, and it was scary to drive around there at night."
She said she made sure to avoid Route 232, a highway in the Negev desert described by The Times of Israel as "a hellish landscape stained by blood and fire."
After over a month of searching for Stevie, Geller said that Dogs & Heroes connected her to Yoram Erez, founder of Preserving the Rights of Animals (PTROA), a nonprofit organization that locates and rescues animals by using military technology.
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Erez told Fox News Digital that on Oct. 7, packs of wild dogs entered the kibbutzim in southern Israel from Gaza through the fence, fighting with domestic dogs and killing farm animals.
He estimated that more than 1,000 dogs went missing after Oct. 7 — and that roughly 700 of them have been found by rescue organizations.
‘Absolute mission to find them'
On Nov. 14, 2023, Geller accompanied Erez to the south. She said that Erez was able to get military clearance to fly drones over each kibbutz and the village of Talmei Yosef, where Stevie had been staying.
"He made it his absolute mission to find all the animals," Geller said.
Geller said she helped Erez feed the cats at the Nir Oz and Kissufim kibbutzim, which were evacuated after the Hamas massacres. Some of the homes were decimated, she said, while others were untouched.
Archaeologists with the Israel Antiquities Authority are shown sifting through debris to find the remains of victims of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israeli border communities by Hamas. (Israel Antiquities Authority )
"You’re walking past a house with a homemade mosaic path, and then the next house is a burned out shell," she said.
Geller recalled how painful it was to be there.
"I was so shaken up by it. I was so sad to see how beautiful [the homes] were … The gardens are incredible … and the sculptures that the children made out of used plastic bottles that spin around in the wind … Every single detail is filled with love."
"I used to come home and scream."
She described the people who once lived there as "salt of the earth … simple and peaceful."
Geller said she was heartbroken by the experience and devastated that they didn’t find her dog Stevie. "I used to come home and scream," she said.
Two days later, Geller received a phone call from a soldier stationed in the south, who said that he thought he spotted Stevie because of his mohawk.
‘Don’t let him go anywhere'
But many people had been calling her by then, Geller said, thinking they'd seen Stevie when it wasn't him — so "I really wasn’t excited."
Charred debris and objects are scattered inside a building in kibbutz Alumim, following the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas terrorists in southern Israel near the Gaza Strip, on Oct. 18, 2023. (GIL COHEN-MAGEN/AFP via Getty Images)
When the soldier sent her a photo, Geller said she was in disbelief.
"It’s Stevie!" she exclaimed. "Please just keep him where he is. And don't let him go anywhere."
Erez said that when he got the call from Geller telling him that Stevie had been found, it was already dark and he was near Tel Aviv — but he "made a U-turn and rushed over there."
He saw "a skinny dog, very terrified, very confused."
Two hours later, Erez reached the Egyptian border, where he said he saw "a skinny dog, very terrified, very confused."
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He said he knew the dog was Stevie because when he put Geller on speaker, "he started to cry … He made a squeaky voice, like when a puppy is crying."
Erez said it usually takes two weeks to locate a dog — and said Stevie was "very lucky" to have been found after he'd been missing for 40 days.
Stevie "started to cry … He made a squeaky voice, like when a puppy is crying." Rebecca Geller is shown on the Facetime video at bottom right. (Rebecca Geller)
Geller waited for Stevie’s arrival in Tel Aviv with three of her girlfriends and their dogs, including Stevie’s twin brother, Billy, who belongs to Geller’s friend and had been keeping Geller company while Stevie was missing.
"I love his brother … It was really helpful for him to be there with me," Geller said.
Geller said she stayed on the phone with her mother and "was so excited … I was just so nervous. I hadn't smiled for 40 days … I was trying to feed everyone dinner and I think I burned everything!"
He hopped up on his hind legs to latch onto her.
Geller, who is single, joked for a moment, "I can find a sand-colored dog in the desert, but I can’t find a guy in Tel Aviv."
Video footage that went viral captured Stevie smiling and excitedly wagging his tail when he spotted Geller. He hopped up on his hind legs to latch onto her, and she tearfully exclaimed how happy she was to see him again. (See the video at the top of this article.)
Geller and Stevie are shown on the night he came home. "I was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re here!’" Geller told Fox News Digital about the experience. (Rebecca Geller)
"I was over the moon … He was alive and normal, and remembered me!"
That night, Geller put Stevie’s new bed that she had bought for him in London on top of her bed. "I just kept touching him, like every 10 minutes," she said.
"I was like, ‘Oh my God, you’re here!’ Every time I looked at him, he was looking at me."
‘Needed to do something for these people’
Geller described how she kept thinking of the pain and trauma the relatives of the hostages must have been feeling while she was looking for Stevie — and still are feeling.
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"All the while I'm looking for Stevie, I'm aware that there are hostages, and I feel stupid for investing so much energy in looking for a dog, but at the same time, Stevie’s my family. I just knew I needed to do something for these people."
She added, "I really feel connected to them. And I rarely tell them because I don't want them to think that I'm minimizing the pain that they're going through for eight months."
On Dec. 14, 2023, she started volunteering at The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, an organization founded by relatives of abductees in Gaza, and she now works on the foreign media team.
Yarkov Argamani with Stevie. Argamani's daughter, Noa, 26, was rescued by the IDF in Rafah in June 2024. Geller said that her dog, who is providing comfort to others, "is so calm, and he is just so present. He also has this kind of sensitivity." (Rebecca Geller)
Geller brings Stevie to the Forum’s Tel Aviv office with her every day, where she said that hundreds of relatives of hostages, as well as some released hostages, have bonded with him.
"I just feel like he looks at them, and he gives them a bit of comfort," she said. "He's so calm, and he is just so present. He also has this kind of sensitivity."
"You can see that he has such a good heart."
A text about Stevie was forwarded to Fox News Digital from Aviva Siegel, 63, a grandmother who was held hostage for 51 days. She is still waiting for her husband, Keith, to be released from Gaza.
She said of the dog, "I love him. He is special. You can see that he has such a good heart."
Itzik Horn, father of hostages Yair and Eitan Horn, also expressed his happiness to see Stevie via a text message.
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In a video, Udi Green, cousin of murdered hostage Tal Haimi, whose wife gave birth to their fourth son last month, said that being with Stevie was a "little escape" and "even better than having the mental health department of the Forum." (He's the individual shown in the second half of the video at the top of this article.)
Yakov Argamani, whose daughter, Noa, 26, was rescued by the IDF in Rafah earlier this month, texted that he realized he had a picture with Stevie — and expressed how happy he was to see "this cutie."
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