Friends dog ran off

scats

scats

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My friend has a young spaniel who is in training as a gun dog. Unfortunately she ran off this afternoon while out walking/shooting.

No sightings of her since.

She’s a gorgeous dog who I am particularly fond of as he offered her to me a while back. Does anyone know what the best way is to try and find her? Will she be more likely to stay around where she was lost? She has a very strong scent drive and when she picks something up, she just goes.
Unfortunately she went missing in a field by an exceptionally busy road. I am worried sick.
 
fiwen30

fiwen30

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Common advice is to leave a strong smelling item near where the dog was lost - an owner’s tshirt or similar - but I don’t know how well this might work for a dog who could be miles away in a scent. May be worth a try though. Possibly see if anyone has a drone with or without a thermal imaging camera?
 
scats

scats

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Pearlsacarolsinger said:
Can you take a dog that she knows well to where you last saw her? In the hope that they will find each other.
Click to expand...

He has an older spaniel too so I will suggest he takes her back to the same place tomorrow.

A couple of my fellow yardies can go tomorrow and help search for her.
She knows my voice really well (I’m one of her favourite people in the world!) but I can’t get up there til either tomorrow night or Saturday :(

He’s been back up and left some of his jumpers and a coat at the place he last saw her. He searched all afternoon until he lost the daylight.
 
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HopOnTrot

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From what I understand you need to go to the area where they were last seen and sit down and be quiet, hoping them come to you.
 
Caol Ila

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I lost a dog for ten days once. Yup. Ten days. Not my dog. I was looking after her while my friend was out of town for three weeks. Take her hillwalking, she said. She will be fine off lead. I'd been hillwalking with her before, and she was fine.

Myself and another mate were up a mountain called Ben Donich, near Arrochar, on a claggy day. The dog caught a scent and trotted off and was not recalled by me waving chorizo. Myself and my hillwalking buddy spent maybe an hour hanging out where we'd last seen the dog (apparently that's a thing) but we got too cold. We had to move. We started walking circuits of the mountain, navigating along its flanks and always circling back to that spot. Nae luck. Eventually, we ran out of daylight and descended.

Once home, I notified the police, posted on some lost doggy FB groups, and I also sent an email to the Arrochar Mountain Rescue Team and posted on WalkHighlands and UKC, the two main hillwalking/climbing forums. I included an OS grid reference for our last sighting of her. Arrochar MRT obviously didn't do a full scale search, but over the course of the week, a few of their members went out looking with SARDA dogs. Nothing. Many other hillwalkers had their eyes open. A week went by and bupkes. You're thinking, either the dog is dead, or someone has picked it up and said, that's a nice dog, and not bothered looking for a microchip.

Ten days after the dog disappeared, I was in class and I got a missed call and voicemail from a random mobile number. I listened to the voicemail as soon as I could. It was a guy saying he was from Arrochar MRT and he added, "I think we found your dog." I called back quickly, and he explained that one of his MRT colleagues, an outdoor ed instructor by day, was out with a group of kids on Ben Donich, and a rather pathetic-looking dog wandered up to them. He minded an email about a lost dog on Ben Donich and thought it matched the description. He said it looked pretty sorry for itself, but perked up after the kids gave it a sausage roll. I was like, Oh my God, that is my dog (except it wasn't actually my dog but that made it all worse!). The outdoor ed group coaxed the dog down the hill and into their minibus, and I drove to the outdoor education centre in Helensburgh and picked her up.

The dog reappeared about 10m from the grid reference point where we lost her. But no one will ever know where she was or what she did for those ten days. It's a relatively popular mountain, so if she'd found her way to that point any earlier, someone would have found her.

Hopefully you will find yours sooner than that. But they can survive out there. If it's in an area popular with hikers and climbers, it's worth contacting their forums as well.

And before anyone asks, I'm still friends with the dog's owner.
 
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FinnishLapphund

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What a nightmare, I really hope your friend is lucky, and finds her tomorrow/that she finds the owner again. But don't give up hope if she's not found soon, like Caol Ila's story shows it can sometimes take a bit of time, and still end happily. I've also heard about a hunter in Sweden who found his hunting dog waiting by some clothes he'd left next to were he had parked his car before the hunt started, about 2 or 3 weeks after that the dog had disappeared during the hunt.

The only things I can think of to add to the already given suggestions is to remember that if it's windy, the wind can be blowing the sound of voices away from the dog. Since she's young, and in good condition, she can have travelled much, much further than people think. If she's not found tomorrow, don't forget that good old fashioned missing posters with pictures can still help make local people aware about that there's a dog missing in the area. Have/can they check so that the owner's contact info linked to the dog's microchip/ID marking is correct?

Maybe it sometimes is correct as @HopOnTrot said to just sit and quietly wait for them to find their way back to you, but A) How many have the nerves to do that? And B) Many years ago I lost my late Smooth Collie out on a walk, when I stupidly didn't think about putting my girls back on their leads when we turned around to go home, and the wind then suddenly started to blow my voice away from them. But when she realised she couldn't hear or see me, she for some reason decided to jump up on a large stone, and just sat there waiting for us to find her (a lovely couple out walking had actually already found her, and tried talking to her, she was very polite to them but refused to come down from her stone). However, note, she never really showed any interest in using her nose to try track anything in her life, except dog treats. Maybe if I'd had pieces of ham stuck to my feet she would've been interested in trying to follow my smell.

Anyhow, hope she's soon found safe and sound.
 
MissTyc

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My friend's dog was missing from professional boarding kennels for 5 days over Christmas (just now).
The dog was sighted in locations that made it look like it was heading homewards direction (while friend desperately trying to book a flight back to UK on 23rd December having just travelled to visit her family), then no sightings for 24 hours - busy road, everyone worried, drones out, etc ... Then someone sighted it nearer the kennels again and finally it was trapped on a driveway only 1 mile from the kennels, over 10 miles from home. The earlier sightings were reliable so it does look like he doubled back towards where he initially got lost.
This was out in the most horrendous weather, yet the dog is well, thankfully!

I hope your friend finds the dog more quickly and keep going back to the site where she got lost. People also recommend parking up a car with open door as a mode of attracting them as they really do go surprisingly feral very quickly, often running away from even their beloved owners.
 
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