By Gary Puleo,Times Herald Staff
Published: Thursday, March 04, 2010
The Brady family is reunited with their 6-year-old boxer, Angus, who was missing for five weeks. Pictured with Angus from left, Ainsley, 2, Stephen, Carissa and Logan, 5 months old.
UPPER MERION — Angus is back home and his owners are calling him a four-legged miracle.
How else to explain the dog’s having survived through a couple of blizzards and, even worse, rush hour traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway during the 33 days he was on the lam?
Barring another miracle that grants the 6-year-old tan boxer the ability to speak, Carissa and Steve Brady will never know exactly where the hooky-playing canine has been since he wandered away from his King of Prussia home in late January.
At this point, however, all the couple cares about is that the timing was right for him to be found by an off-duty Pennsylvania State Trooper near the Gulph Mills exit of I-76, about a mile from home.
Carissa Brady got a call on her cell phone around 4:30 on Tuesday afternoon.
“A woman was saying she was sitting in eastbound traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway and a dog ran by her, going westbound, against traffic,” Brady said. “She had seen the poster we put up, so she had to get off the Expressway and come back in the other direction to get my telephone number. She knew that a state trooper was trying to catch Angus.”
Meanwhile, Brady’s husband was calling her on another line.
“He was saying, ‘don’t freak out, but the SPCA has Angus’. By then the state trooper had caught Angus and brought him to the SPCA in Conshohocken.”
Brady immediately left her office, bound for the Montgomery County SPCA shelter and was reunited with Angus shortly after 5 p.m.
“He looked so terrible because he’d lost so much weight, and I was upset,” Brady said. “But he nuzzled me and gave me a couple of licks on my face and I was crying. Everyone was saying he was probably comforting me.”
Fear and confusion had caused Angus to bite the hand of the state trooper who rescued him, she noted.
“The officer was going after him and had to literally pull him out from under a car. Angus must have been so terrified that he bit the officer, and he’s not a dog that would ever bite.”
Angus was quickly escorted to his vet for a thorough checkup.
“He had a couple of injuries, like two missing toes and an injury to his tail, that must have happened early on when he was missing because the vet said they’re almost healed,” Brady said.
“The vet is very optimistic that he’s going to be fine. It’ll take a couple of months for him to put the weight back on.”
Normally weighing in around 51 pounds, Angus had pared off 23 pounds during his truancy.
“You can literally see every bone in his body. But he’s perky. Last night he was begging for food again.”
After Angus ran away from their King of Prussia home 33 days ago, the couple contacted police departments in all the surrounding areas and used up gallons of gas driving through King of Prussia, East Norriton, West Norriton, Conshohocken and Plymouth Meeting looking for him and tacking up posters with Angus’ picture.
Though she felt increasingly panic-stricken and powerless the longer the dog was missing, Brady said she never gave up hope.
With a reward for the dog’s safe return hanging in the balance, calls were coming in from all over the area. But none of the Angus sightings provided a solid lead.
“We couldn’t be more thankful of the response we’ve been getting from the community, especially the Norristown community,” Brady told The Times Herald on Feb. 18.
Brady mused that, wherever he was, Angus probably spent a lot of time indoors, possibly in an empty building.
“He wasn’t outdoors the whole time because his fur wasn’t dirty and his collar wasn’t dirty. He must have been out of the elements for most of the time he was gone. He doesn’t look like a weathered dog.”
Although the life of a hobo canine may have held some momentary fascination for Angus, Brady never doubted that he was always homeward bound.
“He was on his way home the day we found him ... I’m convinced of that.”
Source: http://www.timesherald.com/articles/2010/03/04/news/doc4b8f4f3fb243d230647129.txt
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See also http://cbs3.com/pets/Schuylkill.Expressway.Missing.2.1538615.html
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