Local girl writes essay about a lost dog just weeks before losing her dog

By Aubrey Ann Parker
Current Editor

Jamison Rae Roethler (9), a fourth-grader at Frankfort Elementary School, is a storyteller. And a dog-lover. And I should know—like recognizes like. 

On the day that I interviewed Jamison and her mother, Beth Roethler (42)—notably a second grade teacher at Frankfort and co-owner of The Cabbage Shed—she had just received a “Panther Pride” bracelet from her school.

“Because I write a lot,” Jamison explained to me. “We do journal entries, and I do very good stories. Sometimes I type my stories, but not a lot.”

However, until recently, Jamison had never taken part in a writing competition. 

Knowing that her daughter enjoys writing, Beth Roethler asked if Jamison wanted to participate in the annual essay contest that has been put on by Stormcloud Brewing Company since 2014. 

Stormcloud co-owner and brewmaster Brian Confer (55) came up with the idea for the essay contest nearly a decade ago and enlisted the help of a few literary locals to serve as judges. (Full Disclosure: The Betsie Current’s co-owner Jordan Bates has served as judge of the anonymous competition every year since its inception, including this year. Bates has also sporadically been employed by Stormcloud to clean kegs, though you would not have called it his “day job.”) 

“Many Stormcloud beers have names with a story behind them. Sometimes I will share the story, while others are kept secret,” Confer told The Betsie Current. “I thought it would be fun to have people submit essays with their own stories behind the beer names.” 

From 2014 to 2018, the first five years of the contest were about “Gerald’s Talking Dog,” a cherry-rye dubbel. The first line of every essay had to begin with “Gerald’s Talking Dog loves cherries. That’s all he talks about…” but the rest was left up to the creative genius of the writer—to spin the “tail” in 500 words or less.

In 2020, things changed a bit—the first line of every essay had to begin with “It was a long way to shore…” in honor of “The Farthest Shore,” a Belgian strong dark ale. The contest took a hiatus in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The last two years, though, every essay had to begin with, “It was a dark and stormy night…” Submissions were due on Monday, February 27, and this year’s panel of judges met on Monday, March 6, to compile their favorites. The winners would be announced during a public reading of the top four essays on Saturday, March 11.

“I got my idea from the movie ‘Dog Gone’ [on Netflix], which we had watched two days before we wrote this,” Jamison told me. “After we had watched the movie, my mom mentioned there was a contest going on at Stormcloud for a writing competition. I thought we should write a story about a dog going missing. We were thinking maybe we should base it on our town—everyone searching and helping. We got out her computer on February 14, and I came up with some ideas. My mom helped me to type it up.”

Jamison’s mother, Beth, added:

“She cried for an hour and a half when we watched ‘Dog Gone.’ In that movie, a lot of people help them. It’s got Rob Lowe in it, and it’s really good. But you will cry.” 

The mother-daughter duo submitted their entry the next day, on Wednesday, February 15. In the story, a 10-year-old girl’s dog has gone missing, so she and her mother recruit the townsfolk to help in the search during a “dark and stormy” night. Readers will recognize local places and people—notably “Rick,” the brewery owner [like Frankfort’s very own Rick Schmitt, co-owner of Stormcloud] and “Frannie,” a shop owner [like Frankfort’s very own Frances “Frannie” Olivares Elbaz, co-owner of Anet & Ollies and Frannie’s Follies, two local shops]. Ultimately, the little girl is reunited with her pup after “Rick” finds the dog on the beach. (The full essay can be read here, with a few minor changes made by The Betsie Current’s editor, Aubrey Ann Parker.)

As the Roethlers were waiting to hear how Jamison’s story went over with the essay contest’s judges, they had cause to wonder if she was beginning to show clairvoyant powers.

Two weeks after Jamison had dictated the fictional story to her mother, Dottie—the family’s two-year-old American Bulldog—went missing on Tuesday, February 28. They believe that she might have chased a deer after playing in the backyard of their home near M-115, just outside of Frankfort. 

“It started with us just searching around the house, just where she would normally wander off to,” Jamison said. “Then it started to turn into a big thing. We had probably 30 people looking for her.”

After recruiting friends to help in the search that first evening—to no avail—the Roethlers put Dottie’s kennel on their back porch around 8:30 p.m. in hopes that she would come home while everyone was sleeping.

However, the next morning, Dottie still had not come home. 

Beth Roethler had put up a Facebook post about their missing pooch, and it received more than 100 “likes,” nearly 100 “shares,” and more than 50 “comments.” Just like in Jamison’s story, friends were offering to help look, and Beth says that more than 30 families helped to look for Dottie, who was missing for a total of 16 hours, including that first night spent all alone outside.

Ultimately, though—just as in Jamison’s essay—Dottie was found and reunited with her family.

“One of our friends [J.D. Kittleson, 43] tracked her footprints into the woods across from our house,” said Jamison, whose father, Tony (46), was able to find Dottie based on those footprints. “She must have been sitting there quietly, because [Kittleson] went right up to where she was but didn’t see her. When we found her later, she was underneath a pine tree, and it looked like she had been there for a while.”

(Notably: J.D. Kittleson is married to Melissa “Missy” Kittleson, who is the other 2nd grade teacher with Beth Roethler at Frankfort.)

Dottie was then taken to the veterinarian to get checked out; she was hobbling a little bit, because she had cut the inside of the pads of her paws and she had frostbite on them. 

When I asked Jamison—who turns 10 years old in just a few weeks—how the ordeal had made her feel, considering it was so much like the story she had written about a 10-year-old girl and her lost dog just a few weeks before, she replied:

“The day that she went missing was actually her ‘gotcha’ day, and she did almost this same thing the day that we got her, but we found her before it turned night that time. I was thinking, ‘Wow, this is kinda like the story I wrote.’ And I wished I knew what she was thinking. I was kinda scared. I felt very loved, though, because everyone around the community was looking for her and helping us out. Everyone went searching for her.”

About a week after Dottie came home, Jamison got the news that she had received second place in the 2023 Stormcloud Essay Contest for her story about “Amelia” and her lost dog, “Yooper.” Sadly, she was out of town—in Florida, with her father, Tony, visiting her grandmother—during the public reading on Saturday, March 11, at Stormcloud. 

“Ms. Kaitlyn read her story,” Beth Roethler explained. Kaitlyn Matesich (31) is in charge of youth services at Benzie Shores District Library and works in partnership with Frankfort-Elberta Area Schools; she is also notably a former Stormcloud employee.

This was Jamison’s first time being in a writing competition, but it likely will not be her last. 

“I felt happy and very excited, because I hadn’t done it ever before and I got second place,” she said. 

Again, being a dog-person and a writer, I was eager to find out if Jamison thought she might keep going with her writing beyond school. For now, at nearly 10 years old, she is thinking she maybe wants to be a teacher when she grows up—like Mom.

Lastly, I asked Jamison to describe Dottie to me, in case she ever gets lost again.

“She’s white with dots on her,” Jamison described her canine best friend to me. “She’s sweet and she’s loving—sometimes she’s naughty, though.”

Hopefully Naughty Dottie stays at home from here on out.

Featured Photo Caption: Jamison Rae Roethler (9) and her family’s two-year-old American Bulldog, Dottie. Photo courtesy of the Roethler family.