By Kelly Kazek, The News Courier
Fri Mar 30, 2012
— When Flo Doughty arrived at her badly damaged home moments after a tornado passed on March 2 and saw a broken pet crate and a dog collar lying in the rubble, her heart lurched.
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| Caleb Doughty, 9, cuddles with his dog Sky on Tuesday when she was found after she’d been missing 25 days. Sky’s crate was smashed when the Doughty’s Canebrake home was struck by a March 2 tornado and Sky was either carried away by the storm or ran in panic. |
The Doughty family’s two dogs, Ethel and Sky, who had been in the home on Royal St. George Street when Flo, her husband Shawn and their son Caleb left that morning, were nowhere in sight.
A dog door allowed the pets to go to the backyard, but that morning, Sky had been left in her crate inside the home. The heavy plastic crate was smashed and the fence had been blown from the backyard.
Within minutes, the panicked family realized Ethel was safe when they saw a neighbor carrying the terrified dog, which the family had rescued after she once raced at the Birmingham dog track.
But where was Sky?
“Dad had a bad feeling and I had a bad feeling,” Caleb said.
The 6-year-old dachshund-mix with one brown eye and one blue one had been adopted from the shelter Peace, Love & Animals.
“She’s my sister,” Caleb said. The 9-year-old home-schooled student considers the pets his siblings and said the two dogs groom one another.
The family, as well as volunteers from Canebrake subdivision, immediately began searching the neighborhood and nearby woods.
They posted signs and placed notices on the Facebook page of the Canebrake Club.
Everyone wanted to help reunite the family with its pet. Someone with Animal Control donated humane traps, which capture a pet without harming it, and construction workers who were repairing damaged homes in the area set out dog treats in hopes of luring Sky.
Flo would receive calls of “Sky sightings,” with the farthest about a mile from the home. After a sighting at Hole 5 on the golf course, several men in golf carts met Flo to aid in a search. “They said, ‘We came to help you find your dog,’” Flo said. “The community was so nice.”
Then, she heard Sky was seen on a nearby street and set a trap in the garage of a home on the street behind her home.
The next morning, 25 days after the tornadoes, construction workers found Sky, tail wagging, inside the crate.
The family drove over from the apartment in Madison where they are living until their home is repaired.
“We were just astonished,” Caleb said.
Flo said, “We let Sky sleep with us that first night and she snored all night. She was so tired from her adventure.”
Although Ethel has suffered effects of a “nervous colon” since the storm, she and Sky, happy to be together again, began grooming each other.
“I prayed and prayed, hoping the persistence would pay off,” Flo said, citing the Biblical parable of the persistent widow.
Source: http://enewscourier.com/x1437243190/Skys-Ride-Family-reunited-with-dog-missing-since-March-2-twister
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