As Louise Hogg was waking up on Sunday morning her friends halfway across the world were trying to let her know her dog was on the run.
Katie, a 14-year-old Schnauzer, had no idea she was soon to become part of a short-lived internet hunt when she left he Grenville Terrace house early Sunday morning.
Andy McKenna was delivering weekend papers that morning when he came across the dog.
“I was going up Bisley Ave and there was a dog standing on the side of the road. I called it over because I didn’t want it to get run over, it obviously didn’t have any road sense. I couldn’t see any tags or collars on it.”
Andy put Katie in his car where she lay on the backseat while Andy finished his paper run.
“She was very friendly she just sat on the back seat and didn’t move. I could tell that she was old just by the way she was moving and acting.”
He says, as it was a Sunday, he would not be able to take the dog to the SPCA or the pound so turned to social media instead, something his wife Jewels had had success with before when she came across stray dogs on her paper runs.
“I took a photo of it and put it up on the Online Garage Sale page to see if anybody recognised it.”
Louise received a phone call from Sophie Gray a daughter of her friends that were traveling in the UK. They had seen the post on the FaceBook page and messaged Sophie to contact Louise. The whole process only took around 15 minutes.
“That’s the phenomenal thing, for my friends to have picked it up on their FaceBook page from the UK while on holiday. Obviously eventually somebody local would have seen her picture and recognised her but these people were getting ready for bed.”
Louise says she uses social media all time but never thought it would help her reunite with her dog.
“That’s what I find absolutely incredulous is this whole social media thing. It’s so global, it is mind boggling really. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that something like that would reunite me with a dog I hadn’t even realised I had lost.”
She says Katie was not known for running away and kept to the property which is mostly fenced and surrounded by trees.
“Her eyesight’s not great and she’s gone quite deaf. She hasn’t escaped for three years and that was because of a burglar alarm that had gone off after a power cut. I’m very grateful because if somebody had gone around that corner and not seen her somebody could have easily hit her, I’m just so relieved to have her back in one piece.”
