LOUISVILLE, Colo. — Acceptance and hope are emotions Jason Herrington has become familiar with.
"Really was a beautiful neighborhood," Herrington said as he walked through Coal Creek Ranch in Louisville.
Herrington, a fiction writer, has come to terms with all of his belongings burning, and he had accepted his family's dog, Violet, was gone too.
"Like a lot of people you wish you had five more minutes or known earlier so you could make sure you had your pets," he said.
Their 12 pound chihuahua boston terrier mix was scared of everything, and his family couldn't find her in their home when they evacuated.
"OK some of her nicknames were 'cow dog,' 'muffin top,' 'snickerdoodle,' 'pudgemuffin,'" he read off his phone.
Those were her nicknames, and they still might be.
"The bloodhound, when he came back this way he was going crazy right around this little thing," said Herrington pointing to his burnt lawn.
Herrington said a bloodhound trained to sniff out human and animal remains tracked Violet's scent off the property and back.
"I figured the closure would be he would bark and say that the remains are in the house and when he came back saying she got out I was shocked," he said. "The big fear now is that she made it out and that scent was from a couple weeks ago and it's been sub-zero temperatures."
Herrington has put out food, water, shelter and even clothes that have his scent in hopes that Violet will come back to visit.
"So now, this is like, hey there's hope, but it's gonna be extra tough to get our hopes up and then just realize hey nothing happens," he said.
Accepting hope can be hard too, but Herrington would rather have that than nothing at all.
"Well if you're hopes aren't up then they're down and that's no good you know," he said.
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