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For the first time in years, dogs and their two-legged friends won’t be able to compete in Gastineau Humane Society’s annual Super Dog Frisbee contest in Douglas on the Fourth of July.

Gastineau Humane Society’s deputy director Samantha Blankenship said the contest has been a staple for at least 10 years.

The society says it has discontinued the event because of volunteer and staffing issues, and it wants to focus on other events.

The event had some special meaning for a black Lab named Butch and his handlers, who placed in the last two Fourth of July contests.

Bob Costas once said that what makes the Olympics transcend sports were the athletes’ stories, and they don’t have to be champions.

Butch, a 7-year-old black Lab, sort of has one of those stories.

“We adopted Butch when he was 4 years old. And at the time, he weighed 108 pounds,” his owner Eric Scott said. “In the first year that we had him, he lost about 40 pounds.”

Forty pounds! Scott said the weight came off as he and his wife, Brandy, took Butch along on runs and hikes and bike rides, and by watching his diet.

“Then it turned out he still had a lot of puppy left in him,” Scott said. “Went from hardly being able to really jump off his two front paws to being able to go four paws up in the air and grab the Frisbee while it’s flying.”

At Butch’s first Super Dog Frisbee contest in 2015, he and Eric won.

Brandy Scott remembers Butch wearing a bright yellow bandana that day.

“For the rest of the day, everyone recognized him because of his yellow bandana,” she said. “He was kind of a small town celebrity for the rest of the day on Douglas. People recognized him as we walked up and down got food and congratulated him, so that was really neat.”

By July 4, 2016, the defending champ had gotten a little older, and the competition was a little stiffer.

A hundred spectators or so ringed the infield of a baseball diamond for the contest.

Butch’s competitors were a motley bunch. There was a sheltie that earned bonus points for returning the disc and shaking hands with its owner, and a poodle who was docked points because it wouldn’t return the disc.

When it’s their turn, Eric and Butch trot over to home plate.

With each throw of the floppy disc, Butch takes off across the infield. And each time, as the gap in between the disc and dog closes, the crowd collectively and vicariously rumbles in a crescendo of tension that erupts into a vicarious gush of “Woos!” and applause.

Butch looks solid.

“Good boy, good boy,” Eric tells Butch when he returns the disc.

After the last toss, the judges sound off.

“He did awesome!”
“He did great! Super excited about it.”
“Two jumps, all four legs off!”
“I know, and then that last one, he had to reach it? I mean, that was impressive. Way to go buddy.”

But, there’s another competitor. A final contestant is announced over a bullhorn: “Lota, with (his) owner, Scott. Scott and Lota, ready?”

Lota is a 3-year-old yellow Lab, and even before the first toss, it’s clear he’s in a league of his own athletically. Lota is so eager, he literally leaps up to eye height with his owner, Scott Forbes.

And Forbes doesn’t hold back when he throws the disc. He really lets it rip, and Lota is a crowd-pleaser.

A small child yells, “He won!”

And the kid was right. Lota easily takes first place with the judges. Butch gets third.

These days, Butch is still a healthy 70 pounds, but at 7-and-a-half years old, he’s getting grayer in the muzzle.

Eric Scott said it’s a bummer there won’t be a Frisbee contest this year.

This Fourth, Butch will be overseeing a pancake feed at the Juneau Arts & Culture Center and may walk in a parade wearing some University of Alaska Southeast schwag.

Blankenship said the contest could come back in the future.

The City of Idaho Falls has hired Juneau Police Chief Bryce Johnson to replace their own retiring police chief. An Idaho Falls news release announced Johnson’s hire earlier today.

Johnson has been Juneau’s police chief for four years. He said he’s leaving to be close to family. He has kids and grandkids in the Lower 48.

“We’ve got a couple of kids that graduated from Thunder Mountain High School and we’ve just absolutely loved it here,” Johnson said. “As the kids grew older, they moved away and now there’s a couple of grandkids – we would really like our grandkids to know who we are.”

Still, working in Juneau has been one of the highlights of his career, Johnson said, and he’s “a little sad to go.”

When asked about the challenges he’s faced in Juneau with increases in drug addiction, property crime and trying to accommodate a growing homeless population, Johnson said those problems are not unique to Juneau.

“The whole country’s going through an opioid epidemic and you’ve got these issues going on all over the state and all over the country,” Johnson said. “That’s not something you can escape in law enforcement.”

He thinks the state’s criminal justice reform and state budget cuts have added more pressure onto local law enforcement and he said Juneau’s police have stepped up to meet those challenges.

Juneau City Manager Rorie Watt is sad to lose Chief Johnson.

“He integrated himself into the community; he volunteered on nonprofit boards; he had a very public facing presence,” Watt said. “He was (an) incredibly hard worker.”

When Idaho Falls officials asked Watt about Johnson’s job performance, he told them that if he could offer Johnson a raise to persuade the police chief to stay, he would.

Juneau Police Department Deputy Chief Ed Mercer will be acting police chief until Johnson’s replacement is hired, Watt said.

Before coming to Juneau, Johnson served the Salt Lake City Police Department for about 20 years. He also served as a Reserve Intelligence Specialist for the U.S. Naval Reserve. And he taught criminal justice and law enforcement in Salt Lake City high schools.

Johnson’s last day will be July 28th.

The Juneau Assembly has compiled its list of potential projects it wants the governor to help secure federal stimulus funding.

The Assembly considered nine projects and ranked its choices by ballot Wednesday at its Finance Committee meeting.

The list has now been narrowed down to five in order of priority:

• A wastewater biosolids system that reduces the amount of sewage waste it ships to Lower 48 landfills.
• A master plan for a marine services center between the Juneau-Douglas Bridge and the Yacht Club
• Rainforest Recovery Center’s expansion to help deal with the opioids crisis
• Juneau Access Project better known as “the road.” There’s a request for $40 million in federal matcching funds revoked by the state after Gov. Bill Walker canceled the state’s support for the project.
• Funding to extend the West Douglas road from a gravel pioneer road to a two-lane highway that would extend on the far-side of Douglas Island

Four projects that didn’t make the cut:

• Requested funding for a new Juneau Arts and Cultural Center, or JACC
• Money for deferred maintenance on Centennial Hall.
• Funds to renovate the former NOAA marine lab at Auke Bay
• Waterfront planning for development north of the Seawalk still under construction.

The list was in response to a May 19 letter from the governor’s office asking the city to rank its priorities for infrastructure investment to be submitted to the Trump administration.

Alaska State Troopers called off a weekend-long search for a 53-year-old Juneau woman because they didn’t find evidence Teri Heuscher was in the area they were searching.

Trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters said continuing without that proof didn’t make sense.

“We haven’t found anything to indicate that we’re on the right trail or something that would tell us where else she might be,” Peters said. “Without any kind of definitive clues to where she is, we don’t know what else to do and we can’t keep doing the same thing.”

Heuscher’s family found her car at the Under Thunder trailhead on Jennifer Drive on Saturday afternoon. The trail leads up Thunder Mountain in one direction and toward the Mendenhall Glacier in the other. Peters said the family searched on their own first, then reported her missing when they didn’t find her. The troopers got the report around 4 p.m.

“We had approximately 25 to 30 organized searchers that were a part of this,” Peters said. “In addition to the organized searchers, we had about the same number of volunteers that were coming in.”

The organized search continued until Saturday night, resumed Sunday morning and was called off Sunday evening.

Peters said evidence indicating Heuscher’s general location must be found before troopers will organize another search.

“Things have to have an endpoint to it, or they have to have something that keeps directing you, telling you that you’re in the right area.”

Juneau police, Capital City Fire/Rescue and the U.S. Forest Service participated in the search alongside volunteer groups: Juneau Mountain Rescue, SEADOGS and the American Red Cross. A Temsco helicopter searched from above.

Peters said when people go missing it can be difficult to know when to start worrying, but she said it’s best to notify authorities as soon as possible.

Update | 10:30 a.m. Monday

The official search for Teri Heuscher was suspended at 6 p.m. Sunday evening. Authorities and volunteer groups had been searching a local trail for Heuscher since Saturday afternoon. Troopers said in a news release that the organized searchers left the area by 6:30 p.m. Sunday.

The release also said that Heuscher’s family was briefed on the suspension of the search.

Groups involved in the search include: Alaska State Troopers, Capital City Fire/Rescue, Juneau Mountain Rescue, SEADOGS, the American Red Cross, U.S. Forest Service and Juneau Police Department. A Temsco helicopter was also used for an aerial search.

Original Story | 1:44 p.m. Saturday

The Alaska State Troopers, Capital City Fire/Rescue, Juneau Mountain Rescue and SEADOGS are searching for Teri Heuscher, a Juneau woman who has been missing since Saturday afternoon.

Authorities said Heuscher is a white female, 5-foot 4-inches tall and has blond hair with brown highlights.

She was last seen at the Under Thunder trailhead on Jennifer Street at 1 p.m. Saturday. She was wearing a blue Bartlett jacket and black pants.

Bruce Bowler with SEADOGS said there are search dogs in the area and helicopters in the air looking for Heuscher.

Troopers are asking anyone who has seen Heuscher since 1 p.m. Saturday to call 907-465-4000.

Editor’s Note: A previous version of this story did not mention Temsco’s, Capital City Fire/Rescue’s and the American Red Cross’ participation in the search. An updated trooper dispatch noted the U.S. Forest Service’s, the American Red Cross’ and Juneau Police Department’s participation.

An award-winning film airing nationally this week over PBS has an Alaska connection.

“Real Boy” is the story of a trangender youth who is building a career as a musician in the Bay Area of California.

The film was directed by Shaleece Haas, a former news intern at KCAW in Sitka.

It is Haas’s first major independent project after receiving a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, but not her first time on national television.

Her 2010 thesis film, “Old People Driving,” aired on PBS’s “Newshour,” and also traveled to some film festivals — including a screening in Sitka, where Haas had been an intern in 2009.

Looking for a new project, she became interested in documenting the life of a transgender adult vocalist.

Instead, she discovered the story of a trans boy named Bennett, on a different musical path.

“The central relationship in the film is between a young transgender musician and his mom, who is on her own journey from resistance to acceptance of her trans kid,” Haas said. “While she’s working through all the things she needs to work through, Bennett is taken under the wing of his mentor, an older transgender musician named Joe Stevens, who helps guide him while his family of origin are trying to figure out how to support him.”

The film follows Bennett for four years, from age 19 to 23, and examines his life from many perspectives — not just trans issues, but family and peer support, addiction and recovery, mental health, and the healing arts.

Haas has screened it 150 times in 20 countries — sometimes Joe and Bennett perform afterwards, and often there is deeper interaction with the audience.

Haas finds this part of film making gratifying.

“It’s really a pleasure to share the film with community and to allow people to share their own stories and the way the film resonates for them in their own lives,” Haas said.

“Real Boy” has won a pile of awards and is a huge success for Haas in the world of documentary film, where she said “there are many great films and not enough funding.”

She’s grateful to the Independent Television Service for it’s early support of the project.

“Real Boy” is the season’s final installment in PBS’s Independent Lens series.

Haas spent four years working on the film, and a fifth year marketing it. She’s not looking for another movie of her own right now; instead, she’s hiring out her skills and talents to other projects.

“Real Boy” is far from over. There are more screenings, festivals, and fundraising still to come.

“All of that is carried alongside the responsibility that I feel toward people in the film — and how much I love and care about them and want to honor them in telling their story, but how much responsibility there is to get it right,” Haas said.

“Real Boy” will be rebroadcast June 21 and 25 on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local TV listings for details.