Former rodeo bullfighter and horse trainer couple wrangle lost zebra back to her owner

SKAGIT COUNTY, Wash. (KOMO) — Anyone can search online to learn how to do just about anything, but there probably has not been a "how to catch a zebra" video posted. That is until now.

“With our experience, it’s better if you can get the animals to come to you, right?” David Danton said.

A former rodeo bullfighter turned dog trainer and house builder, Danton now has a series of videos on his phone that he joked can now be the tutorial for catching a zebra.

“We know how to read animals,” said Julie Danton, David’s wife.

She’s a horse trainer, and together, this couple has wrangled quite a few wayward animals back to their owners.

“We’ve been there, we’ve had cows out on the street,” David Danton said.

This time, they enlisted some friends to help them lure the lost zebra back into captivity to be reunited with her owner.

Sugar was wandering the hills and pastures of North Bend for almost a week, after she and three other zebras got loose during a transit across the state. Three of the zebras were caught rather quickly, but Sugar’s an exceptionally good jumper and hopped a paddock to freedom.

Days later, her owner called Daivd Danton, asking for his help.

He recorded most of his work on his cell phone. One video shows him slowly walking toward Sugar, trying to coax her toward him.

Danton said he pinpointed her location after making a string of phone calls, retracing the most recent sightings of Sugar.

This led him not directly to the zebra but to a horse named Razzle Dazzle.

“That zebra seemed to have found an affection for Razzle Dazzle,” Danton said.

“I’m sure she was feeling pretty lonely out there, which is why she found a buddy right away,” Julie Danton added.

David Danton said, "They’re herd animals and she’s without a herd.”

Danton said he went to Razzle Dazzle’s home and asked her owners if he could go on their property to find Sugar. With permission, he told KOMO News he was just standing there looking around when she suddenly appeared.

Sugar’s ears and eyes and nose just sticking out, looking straight at us a little bit down the hillside, so all we could see was her looking at us,” he said. “This is so amazing. This is a zebra that just happens to show up at the right time!

Now that they knew where Sugar was, they just needed one more lure.

Again, on video Danton captured on his phone, you can see Sugar a good 20 yards from him when you hear him say, “Good girl... good girl... I've been looking you.”

At the same time, you hear him shaking a bucket of oats and crinkling a bread wrapper, trying to get Sugar’s attention.

“C'mon, Shug. C'mon, Shug,” he said.

The bread wrapper he was crinkling held the treat Sugar's owner told him was her favorite: white bread.

"Who knew?” he said with a shrug.

Danton kept tossing out slices of white bread in a path for her to follow into a fenced pasture.

Once he got Sugar through the gate, he slowly walked around a tree, back toward the open gate to close it while she grazed on white bread and oats he left for her.

She had absolutely no idea that she was about to be in this pasture and couldn’t get back out once we shut the gate,” Danton said.

“We had her!” Julie Danton added.

This was far from the end of it, however. David, Julie and their team of volunteers, including North Bend Mayor Mary Miller, spent several hours slowly and silently moving paddock panels to make Sugar’s enclosure smaller and smaller, without her really noticing.

By the time they had created a funnel to direct her right into a trailer, it was dark out.

So, would she willingly walk into the trailer or not? Without any coaxing, she did.

We had no idea it was going to turn out to be as simple and easy as that," David Danton said. "It was fantastic!

David and Julie told KOMO News they kept Sugar safe overnight, with plenty of water and feed and rose before sunrise to hit the road and drive east across Washington to reunited her with her family.