News Hound

I know what it's like to lose a dog. It happened to me - and to my family - when I was a teenager and Goldie, our standard Poodle, ran away. We looked for her in animal shelters, ran ads in newspapers, put up fliers in our town and surrounding areas. After several months of searching every day after school and on weekends, we lost hope.

One year later, almost to the day she disappeared, our veterinarian called and said he believed he had found her. Someone brought in a scruffy, filthy apricot-colored Poodle, and the ID on her collar listed him as the vet. He called us.

It was Goldie, all right. We thought we would never see her again, but there she was in our vet's office looking scared and uncertain. I can't describe how happy we were.

Those memories came rushing back when I read the story about Muffy, a Terrier mix on the east coast of Australia who went missing for nine years. Nine years! The other day, she was reunited with her family in Queensland.

RSPCA Australia heard about the dog from someone who had seen her living in a suburban backyard in Melbourne. But she looked sickly, so the person called the organization.

"We found her living in pretty awful conditions on a piece of cardboard," RSPCA inspector Gail Coulter (pictured above with Muffy) told the Times newspaper. "She had matted hair and was riddled with fleas and had a really severe dermatitis condition."

A welfare agency discovered that Muffy had a microchip and traced her to the Lampard family, which had purchased another dog, named Jack, after giving up hope of finding Muffy. But Jack died four months ago.

"I just couldn't believe it. It's absolutely amazing," Natalie Lampard told the Times.  "I told my daughter Chloe and she was just over the moon. She can't wait to see Muffy again."

The dog will need continued care for her skin condition, but after a 1,250-mile odyssey and almost a decade on her own, she's clearly none the worse for wear.

Oh, the stories she could tell.