It has been 3 weeks since my dog ran away. Every day I think and pray for her. Some moments in my day it still feels like the first day she ran away. We have tried almost everything to find her. The first couple of days we would go out 5 - 8 hours a day looking for her. Now we go out at least 1 hour a day. We have put up posters in local stores and around neighborhoods. We have made little flyers to go in peoples mail boxes with her picture and information, also saying they would get a reward if they found her. We have talked to Groomers and Vets on the Island. And still nothing.
We have herd so many different things. A couple of days after we lost her someone said they spotted a similar dog that looked distort and was walking in the road. The way she described her sounded a lot like her. Where she said she saw her was about 15 minutes away from our house but you have to cross the Rapida (freeway) to get there. We looked for 2 days all around that area, nothing. We then realized it was very unlikely that Ellie could have made it all the way over there safely, so we stopped looking there and started looking in our neighborhood again.
Our neighbors said that she is a very beautiful dog so someone probably picked her up and kept her for themselves, which is what we suspect. We go slowly around our neighborhood looking in peoples yards to see if maybe they let Ellie out to go potty.
Some Portuguese do not speak English so we have to rely on our Portuguese friends if we ever need to speak to anyone. I think finding her would be a lot easier if we were in the states. Plus she has a microchip (which you have to scan and will only work if you have the dog). The microchip company has an alert if your dog goes missing but the alert is only for USA and Canada :(.
We leave our gate open just enough for Ellie to get threw if she ever were to find her way back home. One night we came home after dark from a friends house. We opened the gate to drive up to our house. Ellie used to be in the drive way waiting for us and would move when she saw us so she wouldn't get ran over. Then when we opened our car door that was the sign for her that it was safe to come close to the car. She would jump on us and be sooo excited that we were home. I miss that! Anyways, as our lights hit the drive way we saw a white small animal running from the drive way to the house. My heart stopped and I gasped. My husband told me to run and see. By the time I got to the door the animal was gone. later we saw a white cat running around. What a Terrible tease that was!
I have been posting Ellie's picture on websites for the Island. About a week ago a lady post on the bottom of her picture, "I herd she got hit by a car. Is that true?'. I just stared at the screen for a long time. Then I stared to cry, a lot. After some while I began to be a little angry. If I knew she got hit by a car why would I still have a MISSING picture up!!! And talk about insensitive! Then I remembered that English is her second language and I am sure she did not mean it to sound that way.
Then a couple of days ago Jared and I decided to go explore the island in one of the volcano's. We were inside for about an hour. When we got out we got a call from a friend saying people have been trying to call and that a man says he thinks he knows the house where our dog is and that he is waiting at one of the local stores where he saw the flyer. My heart started pounding. We were about 30 min from that store. We rushed to the store as fast a we could. Along the way we where saying we would not get to exited because there is a possibility it would not be her. But we couldn't help it! We talked about calling the groomer that day because she would be all gross, and how we would not leave her side that the groomer would have to put up with us. We talked about everywhere we would take her and what we would go buy her. We though of how she would get to sleep in our bed the next couple of nights. We finally felt like things would go back to normal. What a relief that would be!
We got to the store a little out of breath (I dont know why because we were driving). He took us to the house and we knocked on the door. A little white puppy came barking out the door. Our faces dropped from a smile to a sad, sad frown. This was not our puppy. We kindly let the man know that our dog is smaller than that dog and she has fuller hair. We thanked him so much for watching out for her and parted ways. On the way home I kept thinking how things had to stay the same sad way they have been for the past couple of week, how we would probably never see our happy little white fluff ball again. Oh how sad that makes me!
