Lady, hound

Runaway dog captured after 7-month-hunt
By Jennifer Sprague, Press staff
Wednesday, June 3, 2009 11:29 PM EDT

MIDDLETOWN — After nearly seven months on the run, and after surviving a frigid winter, Lady the missing hound has been found.

Lady, captured over Memorial Day weekend, is a one and a half to two-year-old dog that ran away from her adoptive owners last November after having been with them for only a few hours. Since then, residents have been aiding Middletown Animal Control Officer Gail Petras in capturing her.

Lady ran away from her owners just hours after they adopted her from the Connecticut Humane Society last November. After she managed to evade capture several times, the hound surrendered over Memorial Day weekend.

Middletown Animal Control Officer Gail Petras has been trying to catch the skittish pooch since she ran away from her new owners with her leash still attached during a walk near Indian Hill Cemetery.

During her seven-month trek around the city, Lady was spotted around the Wesleyan campus before reportedly heading to the Bretton Road area. She was spotted near the Elks Lodge on Maynard Street and near Connecticut Valley Hospital, dragging her bright pink leash for months.

“She obviously has very good survival instincts to last through the frigid winter,” Petras said. “It’s rare we have a dog like this that’s out for so long.”

Petras said three or four weeks would pass between sightings of the runaway hound, but she would always turn up. There were times they thought she had died, but she managed to get by without frostbite or significant weight loss.

At one point, she wandered into a fenced backyard and Petras thought they had caught her, but she found a hole under the fence and dug her way out. She returned to the same yard, where the hole had been filled in, but when the owner closed her in the yard, she jumped the four-foot fence.

In early March, the night before a bad snowstorm, Lady popped up in Ruth and Cliff Drechsler-Martells’ doghouse on Ridge Road.

Ruth Drechsler-Martell left food for Lady twice a day for nearly three months. Lady came and ate, never letting anyone close to her. Drechsler-Martell even tried leaving a trail of cookies to lure Lady closer to the house.

“We couldn’t get near her,” Drechsler-Martell said. “She would run away.”

Then, over Memorial Day weekend, Lady waltzed through the open door of a house near the Higganum line on Saybrook Road, and curled up on the living room floor. The homeowners were having a barbecue and assumed one of their guests brought the dog, but after all their guests had departed, Lady was still there. The hound was still wearing her tags from the Humane Society, so her rightful owners were contacted.

Shocked to find their dog was still alive, the owners told Petras they couldn’t keep Lady.

“She was missing for seven months,” Petras said. “The owners went out and got a new dog. They can only have one dog in the apartment. They really only owned her for about four hours.”

The Drechsler-Martells are considering adopting Lady, but they first need to see how their 9-year-old dog, used to ruling the roost, reacts to the approximately 2-year-old hound mix. Plus, there is always the possibility that she will take another road trip, Drechsler-Martell said.

Sitting on the floor at the dog pound Wednesday, Lady let Drechsler-Martell, Petras and Cromwell Animal Control Officer Cheryl Gagon pet her and feed her treats, but she was shy and calm. She is not aggressive, and Petras does not believe she was abused.

“Her instinct is to run away if she is scared,” Petras said. “She doesn’t act like she was abused.

I think she was just under-socialized.”

Petras said Lady loves other dogs; she is spayed and she has all of her shots.

Source: http://www.middletownpress.com/articles/2009/06/03/news/doc4a273e995236e228585703.txt
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Sophie, sheltie

As hope almost lost, dog was found
By Susan Weich - St. Louis Post-Dispatch
April 17, 2010

Overland, Mo. — Bob and Tammy Young of Overland started a high-tech search when their sheltie Sophie ran away in December, but an old-fashioned dog tag is what reunited them nearly three months later.

See the story here

The 2-year-old dog darted out the front door in December when the Youngs and other family members were decorating for Christmas. The timid dog apparently didn’t like all the commotion, and she ran outside when the Youngs’ adult son was leaving. After he chased Sophie for four blocks, she was out of sight.

Bob Young, 48, said he was beside himself. “I love my dogs; they’re my world, and Sophie was my baby,” he said.

The Youngs posted signs, checked regularly with local animal shelters and handed out fliers, but they also posted ads on the Internet and used an online service to send out 2,500 automated phone calls to people living in the area.

They contacted the Overland Business Association, and officials sent out a mass e-mail to members, asking them to pass the information along to everyone in their computer address books. They used Facebook to alert their friends about their plight.

The Youngs bundled up and went out looking for Sophie at all hours of the night, and they worried every time it snowed, sleeted or the temperature dipped near zero. Sophie had a microchip identification implant, so at first the Youngs were confident someone would find her and a vet or animal control office would scan the chip and notify them.

“As the weeks went by, we thought she was either dead someplace or somebody had found her and decided to keep her or take her to breed her,” said Young.

Then on Feb. 28, a man called to ask if they owned a dog named Sophie. He said he was putting out his trash cans when he noticed her, collapsed in his driveway and called the number listed on her heart-shaped dog tag.

The man lived in Olivette, just three miles from the Youngs, but it was across busy Page Avenue and Olive Street and a set of active railroad tracks from their home. The caller told them to hurry because Sophie was in bad shape.

Young and his son got her and sped to an animal hospital in Bridgeton. “I knew she was alive because she was breathing shallowly, but I was scared to death that we found her only for her to die in our arms,” he said. “As time went on, we prayed; we prayed a lot.”

Sophie got basic care there and then was referred to a 24-hour animal hospital for hypothermia and malnutrition. While there she also got a transfusion with blood donated by a Great Dane.

Sophie had weighed 27 pounds when she ran away, but now her weight was just 11 pounds.

Dr. Anne Wood, a veterinarian who coordinates the emergency clinic at Midwest Veterinary Referral Center in Chesterfield, said, “Initially, I gave her a 50-50 chance of surviving, but I’ve never seen a dog as emaciated as she was survive.”

Niki Prunty, a vet technician at the clinic, said said Sophie’s prognosis now is very good she is back up to 20 pounds and she should have no lasting side effects from her time on the street.

Young is grateful for all the care Sophie got, and recently he and his wife went back to the animal hospital and donated blankets, towels and toys for the other dogs.

“There were a couple of weeks after we found her that I couldn’t even talk about her or look at her without crying,” Young said. “I would tell people in similar circumstances to never give up because there’s always hope.”

Source: http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2010/apr/17/hope-almost-lost-dog-was-found/
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Maya, collie-spaniel mix

Homeward Hound: Waco family reunited with dog after two years, thanks to microchip
By Erin Quinn Tribune-Herald staff writer
Thursday April 1, 2010

The Hairston family was reunited with their dog, Maya, after the dog was gone for two years.

Sara Hairston cried for a month when her collie-spaniel mix, Maya, and two puppies ran away two years ago from her family’s not-quite-enclosed backyard.

“I was just devastated,” Sara, 11, of Waco, said.  Sara and her family slowly moved on after Maya ran away. They adopted Molly, a 10-year-old border-collie mix, about a year ago from Fuzzy Friends Dog Rescue. But they always wondered what happened to sweet little Maya and her puppies.

The Hairston family was reunited with their dog, Maya, this week after the dog was gone for two years. Monday, Happy Endings Dog Rescue called and said Maya had been found.

A Hewitt woman called Happy Endings Dog Rescue and told employees that a friendly dog approached her while she was gardening. The woman could tell the slightly dirty mutt had been well cared for, said LeAnne Fuller, Happy Endings’ adoption and foster volunteer coordinator.

Happy Endings told the woman to bring the dog in and scan her in hopes of finding an identifying microchip, a device the size of a grain of rice that is placed between a pet’s shoulder blades and can be installed in a few seconds. The dog was scanned. Sure enough, the Hairstons’ information popped up.

The Hairstons had adopted Maya four years ago from Fuzzy Friends Rescue, a Waco nonprofit rescue organization that gives new owners the option of microchipping an animal before adopting it.

Fuller and her staff got in touch with the Hairstons, who were at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport returning from a friend’s wedding in New York when they got the call.

“We were just in shock,” said Cullen Hairston, 13. “It was unbelievable.”

The next day, they went to get their long-lost dog.

“She jumped right in my husband’s arms,” Loryn Hairston said. “I don’t know if she’s extremely friendly or she really did remember us.”

Watching the reunion brought joy to Happy Endings employees.

“In this business, there are a lot of sad days,” said Fuller, who said she has worked in animal welfare for 25 years. “But this makes all our efforts worthwhile.”

What happened to Maya between the day she and her puppies strayed from the Hairstons’ backyard and the day she jumped into Thad Hairston’s arms might always be a mystery. And the Hairstons haven’t seen Maya’s puppies since.

“Until you lose a dog, you don’t realize how important microchipping is,” Fuller said.

“With microchipping, if you lose your dog, at least you have that safety and comfort of knowing that you still have that chance of getting your dog back. Without that little chip, this dog never would have been reunited with her family.”

Source: http://www.wacotrib.com/news/Homeward-Hound-Waco-family-reunited-with-dog-after-two-years-thanks-to-microchip.html
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Tyson, small white dog

Facebook Neighbors Reunite Dog with Owner
From: blog.facebook.com
March 5

David Slade’s fiancée Kelly was the first to find the lost little dog. Standing in the driveway on her way to shop for wedding dresses in January, Kelly was surprised when the disoriented animal cheerfully run up to her. Kelly brought the pup, which she nicknamed “Mouse”, inside from the incoming rainstorm to play with their own dogs. She left David to begin searching for the owner of the lost pet alone.

Neither Kelly nor David could have guessed that Facebook would play an integral role in the effort to reunite Mouse with his family.

The dog was wearing a collar, but no tags, leaving David unsure where to begin his search for the owner. Initially, he pursued traditional methods by calling the neighborhood vet and the Humane Society, leaving a phone number and a description of Mouse in case anyone had called to inquire. Once the storm clouds parted, he even went door-to-door in the area surrounding his home, but was frustrated when he realized that many neighbors owned similar small white dogs and all of them seemed to be accounted for.

The following day, David knew it was time to take a different approach. Fortunately, his neighborhood of Hillcrest, a small, older area within Little Rock, Ark., has an active Facebook Page with nearly 2,500 fans. David posted a photo of Mouse, along with the following short message to the Page’s Wall.

Amazingly, within only a few hours, a woman named Lin Chan commented: “That’s our TYSON! Thank you!”

Lin had been alerted to David’s post by a phone call from a friend who had seen the post. “I quickly logged onto Facebook and was relieved and in disbelief when I saw Tyson’s photo posted by David,” Chan said. “My son, who is 4, actually cried when he saw the photo because he ‘wanted Tyson home now’.”

David and Kelly quickly contacted Lin after they saw her comment, and their Mouse, who was actually Tyson, was returned to the arms of Lin and her two sons in no time. During the search, David remembered a cell phone commercial he’d seen, where a picture of a lost dog is sent around town by text message and lead to his owner.

“I remember thinking ‘if only it were that easy,’” David said. “Turns out it is.”

Source: http://reimagen.com/2010/03/05/facebook-neighbors-reunite-dog-with-owner/

Charlie, golden retriever

Missing dog reunited with owners

By Guy Clifton

February 19, 2010

Bob Buss and his wife, Bourne, are glad their golden retriever, Charlie, is home after being lost for weeks.

Reno's Bob and Bourne Buss were 3,000 miles away from home in late December when they received a phone call telling them their beloved golden retriever Charlie had run away.

The Busses had left 5-year-old Charlie with friends in northwest Reno and traveled to Maryland to visit their kids and grandkids for the Christmas holiday. Gentle, but shy, Charlie had bolted out the door of the friends' house and despite their extensive searching, could not be found. It was Dec. 22.

When the Busses returned from their trip a few days later, Charlie was still missing. They joined the search effort, which included plastering the northwest Reno neighborhoods with posters and using social media sites such as Facebook, Craig's List and Petfinder to get the word out for people to be on the lookout for Charlie.

Worry; a search

His owners were understandably worried. Not only was Charlie naturally shy, but also had never been far from the family home in southwest Reno.

To make matters worse, Reno was gripped by frigid temperatures with snow still on the ground from large winter storms earlier in the month. They also knew all too well the stories about pets in the Truckee Meadows ending up as food for coyotes.

"He was raised a house dog," Bob Buss said. "He would only go outside to pick up the paper for us or to be in our yard. I was terrified when he ran away that he would either freeze to death because it was the middle of winter or be hit by a car because he didn't know what a car was."

So they searched. And they worried. And the days turned into weeks.

"When you don't know what's happened to a dog, it's heartbreaking," Bourne Buss said. "Every time the snow came or it went below freezing, I just would lie awake at night and wonder if he was OK."

What kept the Busses going were the posters and network of social media. Charlie was spotted in the vicinity of Mountain View Cemetery. Some people were able to get within a few yards of him before he would bolt away.

"He's a very fast runner, and he kept eluding everybody," Bourne Buss said. "One of the firemen chased him up the hill one day, but he found a hole in the fence and was gone.

"It was an odyssey. Every time we began to lose heart, somebody would call and say, 'We've seen him.' The sightings kind of kept us going."

After several weeks, it became apparent Charlie was spending much of his time in the vicinity of Mountain View Cemetery. The Busses began to leave food and some of Bob's old clothing in front of the cemetery office to try to lure Charlie in. With help from Animal Control, they set up a humane trap and put the food and clothes inside on Jan. 29.

For five days, no luck. Then on Feb. 3, Bourne Buss received a call at home. Charlie had come to the office and was laying down beside the trap.

Bourne immediately called Bob, who drove to the cemetery, where Charlie greeted him with a wag of the tail.

Source: http://www.rgj.com/article/20100219/NEIGHBORHOODS/2190351/Missing-dog-reunited-with-owners
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http://www.rgj.com/fdcp/?1268309875449

Beboy, small poodle

Reunited: The dog was gone, but not for long
A front-page photo helps bring Beboy back to his once-desperate owner; pet vanished during LarkFest
By David Filkins
Thursday, September 25, 2008

ALBANY -- Winston Wolfe was being interviewed by a radio station Wednesday when he got a call from an unfamiliar number. He ignored it.

Winston Wolfe of Albany gives his dog Beboy a kiss outside their Elm Street apartment

Wolfe was asking the deejay for help finding his dog, Beboy, whose antics made him a mini-celebrity before he vanished Saturday at LarkFest.

When the interview ended, Wolfe checked his voicemail. There was a message from a man who said he found the dog. Wolfe called the man, John Nagy.

On Saturday, the 22-year-old roofer had spotted a small, white cockapoo zipping through the crowd at LarkFest. He watched the dog "run around randomly" for a few minutes before he picked it up. It had no tags or collar. He looked around for its owner. Two hours later, Nagy brought the dog to his grandmother's home in Colonie.

Every morning before work, Nagy stops at the Exxon station at Lincoln and Central avenues to buy the Times Union. When he picked up a copy Wednesday morning, he saw a familiar face on the front page: the dog.

"Oh ... my ... God!" Nagy remembered thinking. The dog had a name. And a master. With a cellphone number.

"What can you tell me about the dog?" Wolfe asked when he called Nagy.

"He has no collar," Nagy said. A friend drove Wolfe to get Beboy.

Nagy's grandmother had fallen in love Beboy. She questioned Wolfe carefully to make sure he was the real owner. Then Beboy heard Wolfe's voice and came running.

On Wednesday afternoon, Wolfe and Beboy were on the stoop of Wolfe's apartment. A tricked-out Acura Integra rolled up to the stop sign at Elm and Phillip streets. The driver looked left, then right and saw Wolfe and Beboy. The windows on the Acura slid down.

"You got that thing back!" the man yelled to Wolfe.

"Yeah, yeah," Wolfe called back.

"Hold on," the man said.

The car zoomed off. Moments later it came speeding down Elm Street and stopped at Wolfe's apartment.

"My girl saw you running through the festival looking for that dog," the man said.

Wolfe laughed. "Tell them how much I love this dog," he said.

The man paused. He shook his head and laughed.

Source: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=723713&category=REGION

Kelso, German shorthaired pointer

Lost dog reunited with owners
Kelso was in Waco
By Kate Burke, Staff Writer
Thursday, January 7, 2010

Kelly Michaels and Chadd Priefert were happily reunited with their lost dog, Kelso (center), on Monday, Jan. 4. Kelso ran away when the family vehicle was involved in a crash on I-80 near Waco on Christmas Day. Also welcoming him home are Peetie (left) and Fez. All of the dogs are German shorthair pointers.

WACO — “I just got up and I had to come out to the living room and see, is he really here?”

Kelly Michaels was very happy on Tuesday morning. Ten days after her dog ran away from a car crash on I-80, Kelso, a German shorthair pointer, was found and returned.

Kelly and her fiance, Chadd Priefert, were driving from Omaha to Hebron for Christmas Day celebrations when they were involved in a multi-vehicle collision during a whiteout on the interstate. Two of the couple’s three dogs were quickly found; Kelso ran off.

Kelly and Chadd contacted the York News-Times with their appeal for help, but before the story even appeared on Tuesday morning, Kelso was found by Pat and Bruce Olson of Waco, who live near the place where he was lost.

They recognized Kelso from a flyer Kelly and Chadd had tucked into their door very early in their search.

“We’d been kind of watching for him,” Pat Olson says.

The Olsons’ own dog, a Great Pyrenees named Quincy, began barking into the darkness on Monday night, Jan. 4. Bruce Olson stepped outside to check the situation, and the stray dog came right up to him.

“I think it’s that pup,” Pat reports her husband saying.

Kelso was ready to come inside, get warm and eat.

“He cleaned out our cat food bowl and dog food bowl, and Bruce fed him a couple of hot dogs,” Pat laughs.

The Olsons contacted the Omaha couple, immediately certain that they had found Kelso.

Kelly and Chadd were in an Omaha supermarket when they got the call they had been waiting for. The Olsons, Kelly says, kindly offered to keep Kelso overnight, but Chadd and Kelly jumped into their vehicle and drove out to pick up their dog. They arrived in Waco around 10 p.m.

“It’s him, it’s so amazing,” Kelly says happily.

Kelso is very thin and shows signs of frostbite on his muzzle, Kelly says, but overall he seems to be in good shape. Chadd and Kelly have plans to get him in for a veterinarian checkup as soon as possible.

Kelso is very tired, Kelly reports. “He tried to jump up on the bed, but he was too weak.”

He is also reluctant to step outside, into the bitter cold, right now.

“If only he could talk . . . what stories would he tell of his 10 days out in the snow?” Kelly speculates.

Kelly came away from the ordeal feeling good.

“I’m amazed by peoples’ kindness,” she says. “It’s okay with us that we didn’t celebrate Christmas because of the accident . . . because we learned and gained so much more: the true gifts of kindness . . . from complete strangers.

“We thank all of you, Kelso thanks you,” she continues. “We promise to pay it forward when someone crosses our path of life in need of help as we were.”

Resource: http://www.yorknewstimes.com/articles/2010/01/07/news/doc4b44fa49c1fcc225289200.txt
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Ham, bulldog

Bulldog lost in blizzard found after 11 frigid days
By: Sarah Horner, News Tribune
Published January 05 2010

After surviving more than 11 days outside in the bitter cold, including a spell in which temperatures plummeted well below zero, a dog lost during the Duluth blizzard on Christmas Eve was found alive Monday morning.

Ham was found Monday, after surviving more than 11 days outside in the cold.

Ham, a year-old bulldog belonging to Kevin and Meegan Holubar, was found whimpering on the front steps of Cheryl Lowney’s home on Jean Duluth Road about 6:30 a.m. Monday.

“I kept hearing these strange little noises but I couldn’t figure out where they were coming from,” she said. “Finally, I opened the front door and there was this big face plastered on the window…

I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this must be the little Ham dog.’ ”

After checking the dog’s tags, Lowney discovered it was in fact Ham, but 30 pounds lighter than his regular 80-pound frame and dusted with patches of frostbite inside of his right hind leg and on part of his face. Despite the early hour, Lowney, also a dog-owner, called the Holubars right away.

“I woke up to [a] phone call with someone saying they thought they had my dog… obviously that kind of jolts you right out of bed,” Kevin said. “All things considered, for being out in the cold and in the elements for 11.5 days, it’s pretty much a miracle.”

The Twin Cities couple lost the dog, who was the ring bearer in their wedding this summer, while visiting family in Duluth for the holidays. Kevin Holubar took Ham out, on a leash, for a bathroom break Christmas Eve and lost the dog in the snowstorm. When he tried to run after Ham, Holubar was hit by a car and twisted his ankle and bruised his leg. Despite his injuries, Kevin, Meegan and their family and friends kept up the search. They spent all weekend looking for the dog and were out again this past weekend.

They received a glimmer of hope Saturday when they got a call from someone who said he spotted the dog while snowmobiling, but the Holubars still weren’t able to track him down.

“We never gave up hope,” Kevin said, “but we obviously got a little worried when the temperatures got so cold.”

The couple drove up to Duluth Monday to retrieve Ham, who they said still seems very tired and cold but is starting to show signs of his personality again.

“He’s a big kisser and when we first got to him, we bent down and he came over and licked our faces a little bit,” Kevin said. “Then he went back and sat by the heat register.”

A trip to the vet Monday reaffirmed what the Holubars were hoping: That with some antibiotics and a special diet to help him gain back the lost weight, Ham will be fine.

“We are just so happy to have our family back together again,” Kevin said. “He is not leaving anyone’s eyesight for a long time.”

The couple said they owe a lot of credit to Lowney, who turned down a $500 reward offered for Ham. Lowney said it didn’t feel right accepting the money.

“The reward was the good feeling I got,” she said. “When I called them with the news, [Kevin] said ‘You made our New Year,’ and I said, ‘You know what, I think you made mine.’ You don’t know how happy I was to see them that happy; it was the best feeling.”

Source: http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/156511

Ben, Australian Shepherd

This story involves a wonderful organization called the Animal Media Foundation, whose mission is to facilitate collaborations between the entertainment industry and animal welfare organizations.  Members of the organization stepped in to help find this dog,


McCallum: The Power Of Community
Monday, 12/28/09 7:55am on Commentary Series
By Mary McCallum

When she recently volunteered to find a frightend dog on the run, commentator Mary McCallum was reminded that the spirit of community is still strong in Vermont.

Ben is flanked by his foster mom Sharon, who came up from Pennsylvantia, and Mary McCallum (VPR commentator). Bloodhound Thurber, who tracked Ben, gets attention from Carol Scafuro of the Animal Media Foundation.

(MCCALLUM) At the end of November a reminder about the power of community in Vermont arrived on four feet - or you might say paws. A young Australian Shepherd had been adopted by a Vermont family through an Aussie rescue group in Pennsylvania. Ben was in Vermont less than 48 hours when the family's horse frightened him and he fled, terrified. He dragged with him the metal screw stake, still attached to his nylon lead, which was fastened to the collar that his new owner had just tightened.

The two year-old pup, who had come from a suburban environment, ran for the hills into a strange new landscape. In 24 hours, a volunteer from Vermont's own Aussie rescue organization began a one-man search & rescue operation in the southeastern part of the state. In a matter of days it swelled to eighteen volunteers. With the speed of email, word spread swiftly among animal advocates, Aussie lovers, humane societies and rescue groups. The possibilty that this dog might be wrapped around a tree with a leash and stake attached to him created an urgency that got boots on the ground.

Flyers with a photo of a smiling tri-colored Aussie were posted widely, a local weekly put him on the front page with the headline "Please Help Find Ben," and searchers knocked on doors and stopped vehicles in the area asking for sightings.

And sighted he was - a couple saw him eating from a dead turkey on the side of the road ten days after he ran, and another couple 9 miles from his home reported that they had shooed him from their yard one night, unaware that he was a runaway.

A woman from a town near the Canadian border brought down her large bloodhound and put him on the trail after letting him sniff Ben's dogbrush. They trekked over hill and dale for 3 days, tracing the trail of a dog on a frantic search for food and shelter. Twelve days after Ben took flight, the foster mom who had surrendered him, drove from Pennsylvania to Vermont and spent a cold weekend retracing the trail with volunteers. On Day Thirteen, one hour before the first snowstorm of the season hit, she stood in a field at the end of a road where Ben had once been seen, and called his name. And he came, collarless. The reunion was the stuff of movies.

Dogs are lost every day. The lucky ones are reunited with their humans while others suffer hunger, exposure, speeding cars and predators. Ben, who was searched for and finally found by strangers who had never met him or his adoptive family, is what I call The Understory. He is emblematic of The Larger Story, the one about how Vermonters join together when the call for help goes out.

Ben and Thurber, the bloodhound that tracked him for several days

Whether it's combing the woods searching for someone else's dog or showing up to stack wood for a sick neighbor, Vermonters know how important it is to lend a hand when someone needs it, be they neighbor or stranger. That's community, and why so many of us choose to stay.

Source: http://www.vpr.net/episode/47627/

Peanut, a small blonde dog

A Dog Rescued & Returned to His Family
Lisa, ArkOnline

My husband and I were driving down Macadam Ave in Portland OR in September 1996. We were on our way from Lake Oswego to Portland one night at about 10 o'clock. We were almost to the edge of Lake Oswego when the traffic in front of us came to an abrupt stop. I was in the passenger seat, and all I could see was something in the middle of the street, which for some reason, I assumed was a cardboard box. As we started to pass by, the 'box' stood up and starting darting through the traffic.

Once I realized it was a dog who had been hit by a car, my husband stopped our car, I got out and started herding the dog off the road. Another car pulled off the road and called the Lake Oswego police to come and help rescue the pooch. I was finally able to get this very scared and frantic dog off the road, and to sit and stay in one place (wedged between the highway and a railroad track). The small, blonde 'American fence-jumper' was too afraid to let us come near him, so we just sat near him and tried to calm him down with our voices.

After about 30 minutes of sitting there alongside the busy road, a train approached, and seeing us sitting not more than six feet from the tracks, released the horn over and over and over again to warn us away.

VERY fortunately, the dog didn't budge. After another 30 minutes, with no sign of the police, I was able to get a nearby gas station to donate a bottle of water and a dog biscuit to our cause. We finally coaxed the dog into the back of our car and we took him home.

We found a name and phone number on his dog tag and phoned the owner. A woman answered the phone, we told her we found her dog, and she proceeded to ask us all sorts of seemingly irrelevant questions. She finally told us that the dog had been missing for two weeks and had traveled from deep in Southeast Portland (on the other side of the river!). Her husband had been up almost every night for the last two weeks searching and searching for the dog. Several prank phone callers had called with false leads, thinking it was a pretty funny joke to get the owner to jump in his car and drive several miles just to find his dog nowhere in sight. She was able to contact her husband and within 10 mins his car pulled up in front of our house.

'Peanut', as we later learned was the dog's name, was still sitting in the back of our car and his owner parked right behind us. As soon as he saw his dog, his head fell to his hands and he started crying uncontrollably. Peanut recognized the car and immediately began to wimper, yip, and jump up and down. They were obviously both VERY happy to see each other again after two weeks.

About a week later, we received a card in the mail from Peanut, complete with a picture and a really nice note, thanking us for saving him and reuniting him with his dad - Peanut's injuries from the car that hit him were very minor.

It still makes me really happy to think about that story.

Source: http://www.arkonline.com/lisa_rescue.html

Mugsey, English bulldog

Mugsey, English Bulldog

Friday, March 20, 2009

MUGSEY IS HOME!! 5 weeks, 11 hours later, our beloved Mugsey is home. I will blog tomorrow with the details but wanted to immediately share our joy. Thank you all for your love, prayers and continual support!!! Posted by Susan

Saturday, March 21, 2009

MUGSEY'S HOMECOMING

Yes, after 5 weeks, 11 hours and

thousands of emails,
hundreds of flyer's,
a dozen posters,
blogging,
twittering,
praying,
hoping,
wishing,
crying,
craiglists postings,
following many false leads,
joining 10 local area dog clubs,
faxing and calling dozens upon dozens of veterinarians, dog rescue groups and shelters,
being on channel 9 news,
being on HOT 99.5 The Kane Radio Show,
getting an article with Mugsey's picture in The Gazette,
driving,
walking,
searching,
stalking,
spying
and many other crazy/desperate antics I won't mention.......
MUGSEY IS FINALLY HOME!!!!!

Friday night, March 20, 2009 at approximately 9:30 PM, Mark, Amy and Katie pulled up to their house. As they were walking to their front door, a couple in a black SUV got out of their vehicle and said "We think we have your dog".

After so many disappointments, Mark and Amy were skeptical. At that point the couple opened the back of their car and out jumped Mugsey. Mugsey, Mark, Amy and Katie were beside themselves!!

The story the couple had was that they were from North Carolina visiting her mother. They had been walking around Gunners Lake in Germantown, MD Friday afternoon when Mugsey wandered up to them. Apparently they took Mugsey to the mothers house and while talking with their cousin, the cousin stated she had seen a flyer in the Hunan Best Restaurant window in Flower Hill about a missing bulldog. The couple went online, found Mugsey's blog and there they were.

Mark and Amy were so thrilled they did not even think to ask questions.

Mark, Amy, Katie and their three dogs then ran over to my house. When I opened the front door, it took me a moment to realize that I was actually seeing Mugsey. Then tears, screaming, laughing, kissing and hugging ensued. What a wonderful, joyful and amazing moment!!

When Mark, Amy and Katie got back home, Katie looked up to her parents and said "We are finally a family again!"

Yes, we have many questions that will most likely never be answered (such as; why didn't the couple call, how did they get the address, where has Mugsey been for 5 weeks, who actually took him, why was he taken, etc. etc.) but we are just thrilled to have Mugsey home with his family where he belongs.

Amy and Katie took Mugsey to their veterinarian this morning. Mugsey has lost 5 pounds but otherwise appears to be in good health. And yes, he was microchipped today!

Tonight Mark to Mugsey to PetSmart to take down his missing dog poster and to get him a new collar and name tag along with some new toys and a new dog bed.

We want to thank each and every one of you for your love, support and prayers- Thank God for people like you and THANK GOD MUGSEY IS HOME!!

Posted by Susan

Source: Susan's blog at http://findmugsey.blogspot.com

Amy, Boxer

Family drives 5,000 miles to find lost dog--
By Chris Brooke
10/8/98

WHEN Jennifer Kirkwood's beloved boxer dog was stolen she was determined to move heaven and earth to find her again.

Now, two months later, the mother of two has been reunited with her pet Amy after an exhaustive 5,000-mile search costing around $2,000.

A delighted Mrs Kirkwood said: 'We are so pleased to have her back. You can't believe how relieved we are - we have loved her since she was a puppy.'

The hunt began in August when Amy was taken from outside a shop. Police found that a teenage girl had been seen with the dog but had no other clues.

While others gave up hope that the pet could ever be traced, 53-year-old Mrs Kirkwood set out to track her down.

She and her family spent every spare hour driving along lanes and roads within a 20-mile radius of their home in Hessle, East Yorkshire. Mrs Kirkwood clocked up 2,100 miles, while her children Frazer, 23, and Dominique, 31, each travelled around 1,500 miles. Husband Michael, 60, was away at sea much of the time but helped out when he was around.

Come rain or shine Mrs Kirkwood would walk miles on foot, searching alleys, fields and buildings. She printed hundreds of posters offering a $100 reward and at one time took a week off work to concentrate on the investigation. The pet detective also wrote to 360 vets and animal hospital across the country in case Amy had been handed in. Then, last Saturday, all the hard work paid off, when Mrs Kirkwood received a phone call from someone who had spotted five-year-old Amy at a campsite at a local village.

'We had lots of reports from around the area she was found that a small boxer dog was running around,' she said.

'We travelled out there almost every day to look but we must have missed her. It went very quiet for a while but then we had a call from a man in a phone box near Skirlington who said a boxer dog had been around there and someone had managed to tempt her into a caravan with some food.

'When she went to meet her she was so excited. Amy's only just getting back to normal now - it looks as though whoever had her was keeping her tied up outside. I can't believe anyone would want to do that to a dog.

'My advice to anyone else who loses their dog is to never give up. The police can only go so far and you have to turn pet detective if you want to get your dog back.'

Source: http://www.animalworldnetwork.com/bfamdriv50mi.html