A Washington woman determined to find her missing border collie quit her job as a postal worker, spending 57 days canvassing the community where the dog went missing before finally reuniting with her.
As the Spokesman reported, Carole King had traveled to Flathead County in Montana with her husband for a four-day vacation back in July. The two went out for dinner one night and left their 7-year-old border collie, Katie, behind in the hotel room. When they returned, Katie was gone.
King said she felt sick to her stomach, and rushed to the hotel clerk to ask if they had her dog. The clerk informed King that the dog escaped when the automatic doors opened and was gone. There had been a thunderstorm that evening, and King thinks that Katie may have gotten spooked and opened the hotel room door to flee.
The hotel clerk helped searched the grounds and then tried to help by posting a missing dog notice on a community Facebook page, but there was no sign of Katie.
The dog’s owner would not give up. King remained in the area, canvassing neighborhoods and putting up 500 flyers. She even put up game cameras in places where locals had seen the lost border collie. King had to quit her job as a postal worker as the search consumed her.
“I never gave up. I never lost hope,” she told the newspaper.
Word began to spread around the community of King’s search for the missing dog. Many locals pitched in to help, spreading the missing dog flyers and even dropping off food for the distraught owner.
Earlier this week, King thankfully had a breakthrough. She got a call from a man who saw a dog that looked like Katie in his yard. The dog was gone by the time a friend arrived to see if it was Katie, but King and the friend started to canvas the neighborhood, searching with a pair of binoculars.
Another woman approached, saying she had just seen the dog .
“As the lady was walking back, she points over to the tree where it’s real dark and says, ‘Is that your dog?’ ” King said. “And I turn and it’s Katie.”
She called out to her dog, who came running.
“I just bear-hugged her; I wasn’t going to let her go,” King said. “Tears were flying, we were screaming, everybody is high-fiving, hugging each other. People are stopping in their vehicles, getting out and hugging us. I think the whole neighborhood knew that we found her.”
The Great Falls Tribune reported that Katie had lost a significant amount of weight during her ordeal and was dehydrated, but was expected to recover now that she had been reunited with her owner.
The amazing reunion story is now attracting some nationwide attention, with a number of major news outlets picking up on the unlikely story of the lost dog. There have been a number of other similar stories to garner viral interest in recent years, including an owner who was reunited with her goldendoodle after it was lost for weeks in the Rocky Mountains.
