A missing dog that mobilised the Lower Mainland greyhound community was found by a fellow canine on a Burnaby Mountain trail Tuesday morning after being AWOL for nearly 10 days.
Daniel, a brindle greyhound, slipped out of an open door near the Vancouver-Burnaby border on Nov. 26 and took off into Burnaby.
“He got from Adanac and Cassiar to Forest Grove, which is like 12 kilometres, in his first hour missing,” his owner Nicole Yuen told the NOW. “He just basically was facing one direction and kept going that way.”
His disappearance sparked a flurry of search activity from local greyhound lovers, including members of the Lower Mainland Greyhounds and Sighthounds Facebook group, who posted about him, formed search parties and went out on their own to look for him.
“People just came, and strangers came,” Yuen said. “I never asked anybody, and people just showed up. I’d run into people looking for my dog, and I’d introduce myself, and they’d be like, ‘Oh, you’re the owner.’”
After several sightings over the last nine days – in Forest Grove, at Burnaby North Secondary and SFU – success came Tuesday morning, when Coquitlam resident Sue Legault and her German shepherd, Luger came across Daniel on a Burnaby Mountain trail and managed to leash him and walk him down the mountain.
“I just about stumbled over him. I wouldn’t have seen him had it not been for Luger,” Legault said. “He blended right in and he was curled up and he was shivering.”
At first, Legault was worried about scaring Daniel off, but the doggy treats she had in her pocket did the trick.
“I gave him a couple treats and hooked up Luger’s leash to him and he just followed me out.”
Besides being a little skinnier and a bit scraped up, the lost hound appeared to take the end of his adventure in stride.
“He just literally walked to the car, jumped into the back like he normally does,” Yuen said.
Yuen adopted Daniel, an ex-racer from Florida, through the Northwest Canada Greyhound League in early September.
He is the first dog in the family, which had been cats-only until he arrived, according to Yuen.
The response to his disappearance from greyhound lovers near and far has been overwhelming she said, with people calling from as far away as Vancouver Island and Washington State to offer help.
“I’m joking with them that, like, we say cat people are crazy. Cat people got nothing on greyhound people,” Yuen said. “They’re bonkers, man, but in a totally good way.”
