Family pet turns up in culvert eight days after it went missing
"Java" found safe and sound
DEBERT - For eight days Carrie Barclay frantically searched for her beloved dog, Java, never knowing the pooch had never even left the driveway.
"She was literally right under my feet," Barclay said. "I can't believe the number of times we drove over her, how bad it probably would have scared her too."
That is because her eight-year-old American Staffordshire terrier was stuck in the culvert at the end of her driveway.
The dog disappeared on Nov. 14 while Barclay was distracted by friends who had stopped by her home. Because Java doesn't normally stray too far, she didn't give her absence a lot of initial thought. But as daylight turned to dark and the hours turned into days, Barclay had all but given up hope of seeing Java alive, thinking she may have been the victim of a deer hunter's wayward bullet or some other such misfortune.
With family and friends, they searched the nearby woods and roads to no avail. On the second day of her absence, they could hear whining nearby and believed the dog was in the bushes somewhere.
Barclay put out posters and late at night would sit on her doorstep whistling and waiting in vain for the light pitter patter of Java's feet that never came. Or she would go out with the flashlight "... in case she was hiding in the woods or something.
"I never heard a sound out of her," she said. "And, the whole time, she never even left the driveway."
Early last week, she decided to start a Facebook group in the hope of soliciting the help of a wider audience, only to discover others had already began posting information on the Internet. And while she received numerous tips from people believing they had spotted her dog somewhere, each fresh hope was soon dashed.
"I could never imagine now, after losing a pet, what people feel like losing a child. Just that sickening feeling of not knowing where she was at," Barclay said.
On Saturday, however, she was in the mall and waiting for the Santa Claus parade to begin when her brother-in-law called to say the dog had been found in the culvert.
Barclay's neighbour had heard an animal whining as he was getting out of his vehicle and after walking around the area, eventually zoned in on the culvert. When he looked in, "there she was," Barclay said.
The dog had wiggled itself through the tight space almost to the other end but after eight days without food or drink, it seemed unable to make it all the way through.
While the neighbour started to dig the rocks away from the end of the sluice, Barclay's sister called another neighbour who arrived with a backhoe to dig out the culvert.
Java came away with a gash on one leg but, otherwise, beyond being hungry, thirsty and tired, she was none the worse for wear.
"I can sleep again," Barclay said. Beyond her "relief," she is also overwhelmed at the support received during her ordeal.
"Community support is fantastic," she said. "I would never have imagined that that many people care."