Lilly Ford's Siberian laika puppy Sacha sniffs everything, which is how Rebecca Brewer's lost wallet was retrieved from a snow berm along Chilkat Inlet.

Brewer had noticed her salmon-skin wallet missing in early February. She posted notices around town at places she may have left it behind. She notified the police. After a few days, she canceled the credit cards inside. "I thought I'd never recover it. I'd given up hope."

On Feb. 12, while walking Sacha along the beach side of Mud Bay Road, Ford noticed her dog had stopped behind her. Sacha was walking in a circle around an object. "His nose pointed to it just as I turned around."

It was Brewer's wallet, soggy but intact.

Ford immediately started approaching others walking along the beach, and Brewer happened to be along River Road at the same time, not far away, making her regular walk with friend Sam Jackson and her own dog, Yasha.

"It was a guardian angel moment," Brewer said. "I was extremely lucky."

She said the wallet may have fallen out of her pocket during an especially blustery hike there when she was crouching below some trees.

Brewer makes wallets, bags, and jewelry with salmon skin, using tannin from tree bark as a natural tanning agent instead of chemicals. So she wasn't surprised to learn that Sasha honed in on the wallet.

"I'm sure of a dog's nose if it didn't smell like food, it at least smelled interesting," Brewer said.

Its salmon-skin hide may have saved the wallet, but also had the potential of dooming it, she said. "I was afraid a raven might find it and eat it."