Recently, my family experienced the anxiousness associated with a missing pet. Our youngest daughter recently graduated from high school and with that came us frantically attempting to get a long “to do” list done around the house preparing for a graduation open house. One of the items on the list was doing some repairs on our backyard fence. One day I was replacing some of the boards on the fence while the dogs were out in the yard with me. I thought I was keeping an eye on them pretty well as I worked on the fence. The rest of my family was going in and out of the house constantly, so when I didn’t notice the dogs anymore I just assumed they had went inside. I was wrong. At some point when my back was turned, our Labrador and Boxer just quickly slipped out of an opening in the fence.

About 45 minutes after the last time I remembered seeing either of the dogs, I received a call that someone had seen my Labrador next door. A quick inventory of dogs showed us that the Boxer was also missing. I ran next door and called for both dogs and within seconds our Labrador, “Bea”, came running right to me. Unfortunately, the Boxer, “Katie”, was nowhere to be found.

We began looking for “Katie” in the direction that “Bea” was found. We assumed they took off together and ran the same direction. There was no sign of here anywhere. As a veterinarian, my thoughts immediately went to all the possible bad things that could happen to her out running around. I tried to push that out of my mind and my daughter and I got in our cars and started driving around looking for her while my wife kept looking around the house.

As I was driving around, I was glad that I had decided to microchip all four of our dogs just in case this situation ever happened. “Katie” wasn’t wearing a collar with tags because several years ago she was playing with “Bea” and “Bea’s” lower jaw got hooked under the collar and twisted almost strangling “Katie”. We didn’t want to risk that again. I knew that if “Katie” was picked up by someone and taken to any shelter or a veterinarian office, she could be scanned and the number on the microchip would identify her as our dog. I highly recommend this for all dogs.

As I was thinking about this while driving around, I heard an alert go off on my phone. Hoping it was someone in my family letting me know they had found “Katie”, I glanced at my phone only to see it was someone mentioning my name in a Facebook post. Initially, I just put the phone down, but then thought I should at least check the post. I opened Facebook and there was a picture of “Katie” in the backseat of someone’s car!

The picture was posted on the Deb’s Dogs Facebook page. Deb’s Dogs is a great non-profit organization that takes in dogs and finds great homes for them. Through this Facebook page, Deb also posts pictures of dogs found wandering around in the hopes of getting them returned to their homes. “Katie” had wandered up to someone 2-3 miles west of our house. They loaded her up in their car and called Deb from Deb’s Dogs to see what they should do with her. Deb told them to take her to the dog warden’s office since that is usually the first place someone would look for a missing dog, but also to send her a picture she could post on the Deb’s Dogs Facebook page.

Within minutes of being posted, one of my employees saw “Katie” and tagged me in the post, causing the alert on my phone. I called Deb and she told me the family who found “Katie” was taking her to the dog warden’s office. I headed home to tell my family the good news and as I pulled into the driveway I noticed an unfamiliar car in the driveway. The family that found “Katie” had stopped at our house on the way to the dog warden’s office just to see if we knew who owned her. She seemed very comfortable in their car and really had to think twice about getting out. She acted mad at us for all of this commotion! Boxers are just weird sometimes, but we love her anyway. Thank you to the family that picked her up.

Chad Higgins, DVM has owned Amanda Animal Hospital for the last 18 years and sees dogs, cats, ferrets, and other little furry critters.