Midnight, black lab mix

Midnight's Story

April 28, 2013

Midnight, a five year old black lab mix with a little white streak on her chest, went missing from her home in Goodview, which is a little southeast of Roanoke VA, on March 25th.

Midnight's family put up fliers. They began checking the local shelters. They posted her picture and information on Facebook, to the Lost & Found Dogs VA page.

This is one of the fliers that was posted for weeks when Midnight went missing

On April 2^nd, Megan created a page devoted to the search for Midnight. She included a detailed description of Midnight, and many pictures of her.

Some sightings were called in within the first week. Someone has seen her on a field on Parrish, and there were sightings on Thomason Mill Rd. But the sightings dried up, and time began passing with no calls at all. It was driving Midnight’s family crazy.

When calls did come in, it would usually be another black lab, and not Midnight, no matter how certain the callers seemed that it was Midnight they saw.  Or, some of them may have seen her, but couldn’t catch her, so her family was never sure.

Hopes were really raised when the family was contacted by the animal shelter in Radford, a little over 60 miles away. True, it was a long way, but it was possible. The family anxiously followed up, but it wasn’t Midnight.

When she had been missing three weeks, she was seen again near one of the previous sightings. This time, she was limping. She ran into the woods, and was nowhere to be seen by the time her family got there.

Exactly a month after Midnight disappeared, on April 25^th, the family tried something new. They did something that the Missing Pet Partnership always advocates – they replaced some of the regular 8 ½ by 11 posted fliers with big neon signs.

Within 2 days, on Saturday, April 27^th, a call came in that Midnight was in someone's backyard. The man had been seeing her for a week and in fact, she had been sharing food with his dog that whole time. He had taken a picture of the dog he saw, and he sent it to the family.  They could tell for sure it was her, and rushed right out to go to the man’s house to indeed get their Midnight.

The man hadn’t noticed the regular sized fliers that had been posted for nearly a month. But pretty much right after the large neon posters went up, he saw them and knew who to call about the dog he had been seeing, and feeding, for the last week.

Within 2 days of replacing some of the fliers with  large signs like this, the long awaited call came in!

She was checked out by the vet and other than dehydration and some ticks, she was basically problem free, but oh so happy to be home!

Midnight's FB page is at: https://www.facebook.com/HelpFindMidnight