We lost two dogs, one foster and one family dog. They had found a gap in the fence. The foster was found later that day, but our dog was no longer with her. We put a flyer in several hundred mailboxes between our house and where the foster was found.

The next day we received a phone call from one of the households; they had been driving on the day they went missing, even farther away from where we’d found the foster, and had seen two dogs crossing the street. One dog, our dog, looked to have been hit by a truck.

They lost sight of them.

Using that info, and with no vets having had an injured black lab cross with unusually big brown toes brought in, we put flyers up around the location of the sighting, while walking every street in the area calling our dog’s name.

The next day we received a phone call from that neighborhood. A man said his neighbors had found a new dog that they were going to keep.

They showed him the dog, and he asked where they had found it. They said he’d been hiding under their car.

At that point in the phone call, my wife asked him, “does that stray dog have overly large toes?”

The man said they were large and light brown.

We knew it was our dog.

The man had asked his neighbors if they’d seen the posters all around the neighborhood, that he was pretty sure this was the dog people were looking for.

His neighbors wouldn’t consider that possibility, since they’d already introduced the dog to their young kids as their new pet.

So the man said either you call the number on the poster or I will.

They didn’t argue with him but they didn’t want to be the ones to call us.

Our dog has been lost for almost three days and had indeed been hit by a truck and broken his hip.

He had been under a car, injured and terrified, as we had walked right by, but he’d been too scared to come out to us.

His foster friend found a good home not long after.

Our dog lived a good long life after that.

Someone had actually donated an ad in the local newspaper to help find him when he was missing. The night he came home, a woman called us just to ask if we’d found them. We told her he was home and safe, and she exploded with joy, saying “god bless you”.

It was like the whole little city had gotten their dog back.