13-Year-Old Dog Disappears During Blizzard. Found 5 Days Later, Buried Alive in Snow
When a pet runs away, it can take a toll on the owners who cared for them. The feeling is indescribable and certainly something no one ever wants to go through.
Maine resident, Albert Silver, experienced this scary feeling earlier this month.
His family dog, Sophie, was last seen on Thursday, Jan. 4, which prompted a Facebook plea the very next day.
Silver wrote: “We are missing our 13-year old yellow lab named Sophie from Cushman Road in Bryant Pond. She went out with all of us last night just before [5 p.m.] while we were plowing and shoveling, and she wandered off and hasn’t come back.”
For the next several days, Silver’s family and a few good neighbors were all searching for Sophie. Local animal control also volunteered to find the lost pup.
“We looked on foot and by snowmobile and by car,” Silver told WCSH-TV. “We were pretty convinced that she had gone somewhere to die.”
On his post, which garnered more than 2,400 shares, Silver updated followers on the search.
He had a few basic leads on where Sophie may have gone prior to her disappearance.
“She followed us next door to her [aunt’s] house when we plowed there,” he wrote in a comment.
“Afterward she went to a neighbor’s house that she visits often and then he sent her home. She was last seen leaving his house.”
Hope was dwindling with every passing day, but by the following Tuesday morning, things suddenly turned around. A man by the name of Richard Austin found Sophie buried alive in snow.
He first spotted the dog’s head “peeking out of the snow” in an area Silver had searched over before.
With the help of his tractor, the man was able to plow the lost dog out of the snow and reunite her with her family.
A visit to the vet determined that Sophie was healthy after the five-day ordeal, though she had dropped 5 pounds. Even better, x-ray and blood work samples all came back normal.
Now that his sweet girl was back home, Silver made sure to thank everyone on Facebook who helped with the search.
He said, “This is truly a miracle and our prayers were definitely answered.”
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