Missing dog lured back to owner with bacon trail in heartwarming scene
The heart-warming moment a dog bolts into its owner’s arms after it was missing for a week has been captured by a drone.
John Stringer, 50, rushed home from a family holiday in Turkey after he found out his dog – a two-year-old cockapoo called Molly – ran away from his elderly mom’s cottage in Pateley Bridge, North Yorks.
John’s sister, Carolyn Oakley, 46, quickly posted a call out on Facebook, and before long, a search operation was launched by Vivienne Hanson, 60, through the volunteer dog rescue charity, Busters Animal SOS Team.
After a week of chasing leads, setting bait traps with sausage, chicken, and gravy, and using cameras to track Molly’s location, drone footage captured the moment John was finally reunited with his lost pup.
John, from Leeds, West Yorkshire, said: “It was such a relief when she ran over and was all cuddles.
“That week was a rollercoaster, everything was on a knife-edge, I was expecting bad news at any moment, but for it to end that way was just immense.
“It was one heck of a week with many sleepless nights.
“I can’t thank Vivienne and Andy enough, as well as the locals who were so kind and helpful with bringing Molly home.”
John – who works for the NHS – was just days into his eight-day family trip to Marmaris, Turkey, when he received a phone call at 2am local time from his mom that Molly had gone missing on Monday, August 25.
He said: “She said she had let her out for an evening wee until Molly had decided she wanted to go home and jumped over her garden wall, which is about 4 and a half feet tall.
“Molly is only small, about 12 inches tall, leg to shoulder, and about a foot long, so I was surprised and shocked to hear she had managed to do so.
“She had then run down the road looking for my car, and when my scent disappeared, she had gotten herself lost running in the wrong direction trying to find it again.”
John then told how his sister Carolyn quickly put up a missing dog post on Facebook and subsequently received messages from a number of people who were willing to help find her.
The dad of two then rushed home – booking the next available flight back to Leeds on the Wednesday – so he could help with the search effort.
John said, “I was extremely worried.
“The Yorkshire Dales are a vast place – she could have been anywhere.
“All night I was lay in bed waiting for follow-up messages from my sister about what was happening.”
Carolyn received a message from missing dog charity The Lost Dog Trapping Team, run by Mandy Butler, who put her in contact with Vivienne, who is based in Bradford, Yorks., who took on the challenge of finding missing Molly.
The same night, volunteer Andrew Gilpin, 67, travelled over an hour from Bradford to Pateley Bridge to set up two cameras outside John’s mom’s house to check if Molly was still in the area.
Vivienne revealed the trail went cold until Thursday when a gamesman reported seeing Molly run in front of his car, then up a hill and under a gate – near Gouthwaite Reservoir, around six miles from home.
John said, “The cars must have scared her further and further away.
“Vivienne told me that Molly had entered into flight mode, so she was just focused on surviving, finding food, water, and shelter, rather than being found.”
“She was then spotted about six miles away from where she should have been.”
Vivienne then told how she contacted the farmer and asked for the location of the gate.
Then on the Saturday, she visited the spot where she found paw prints in and around a nearby small stream, which were a match to Molly as well as her excrement.
A camera was then set up in a number of more locations, as well as some food, which included sausages, bacon, chicken, liver, and gravy, in an attempt to feed her and try to work out her rough location.