Boris was lost for 105 days but now he’s found.
A Barrack Heights family are celebrating their Christmas miracle after a huge Facebook awareness campaign paid off and their dog was spotted hiding under a house last week.
In early September, we reported on Barrack Height’s father Tom Dahne’s quest to find nine-year-old Boris, a red heeler-cross-American staffy.
Two weeks before that, on August 23, Boris had escaped from his yard and been clipped by a passing car. Frightened but uninjured, Boris was last seen fleeing northbound along Shellharbour Road in Warilla.
Despite search efforts, there were no confirmed sightings of Boris in the 15 weeks that followed and Tom admits he and his family had begun to lose hope.
Then, on December 5, 105 days after Boris went missing, Tom was tagged in a dog sighting post that he initially chalked up as another false lead.
“When this post come up in Illawarra Lost & Found Pets group and people tagged me, there was a comment in there that said it was a bullmastiff, which is a big, big dog, and I'm thinking that this is just going be another dead-end lead, but I did actually go and follow it up because I had to make sure,” Tom said.
“When I first got there, for the first five seconds he wasn't sure, but then when I called his name, he came crying and ran out from under the house and started giving me kisses and cuddles straight away. He was crying like a baby.
“I had to ring [my partner] Leanne… I'm like, ‘I've got Boris. I've got Boris.’ And she's like, ‘No, you're joking, right? Are you serious?’
“And as soon as Leanne turned up 20 minutes later, he was the same with Leanne as he was with me. He was just over the moon that he had been found.”
Lawn mower Andy Bridge had spotted Boris cowering under a house on King Street, Warilla. According to the homeowner, Boris had been coming and going for up to two weeks, hiding in tall grass during the day and heading out in search of food at night.
As the dog was noticeably malnourished and anxious, Andy reached out to a friend who posted the sighting on Facebook.
“It was only by chance that Andy and his boss said, ‘Oh, let's go and cut that grass’, because they weren't going to, and Boris only had maybe a week left before he got to the stage where he wouldn't have had the energy to do anything,” Tom said.
“He had lost 50 per cent of his weight. He was 38 kilos and he had dropped down to 19 kilos, so his organs were in the stage that they probably would've shut down if he hadn't been found [then].”
His family took Boris straight to the vet, where he was diagnosed as emaciated and placed on a high-protein puppy diet, but was otherwise well enough to return to the home he’d been missing for more than three months.
As he had regularly during Boris’s disappearance, Tom was eager to update the 1000-plus people who’d joined the Facebook community group ‘HELP FIND BORIS’ – this time with exciting news.
As hundreds of well wishes were posted, group members – including those who’d helped Tom in his physical searches for Boris – expressed their elation, describing how Boris’s story had touched them.
Despite the story's happy ending, Tom is determined to keep the group alive to support other people who have lost their pets.
“I'm going to turn Boris's group into a group now for the Illawarra, to help other people in my situation to help find their pets,” Tom said.
“Why would I shut down a group that's got over a thousand dedicated members in it now, you know?
“The community has just exploded and it's impacted a lot of people in the area. They've really taken on Boris, [he’s] just become this celebrity thing, and it's brought hope to people who have got lost, missing dogs.”
At the request of the group’s members, Tom will host a meet-and-greet with Boris in the new year.
“Sometime after January… when Boris has recovered, he's put his weight on, there's a lot of people that actually want to meet Boris because it's just touched them that much,” he said.
“We're going to do a meet-and-greet down the foreshore down at Lake Illawarra… so it's not just Boris has been found and that's the end of it.
“There are a lot of good people in the community. The way that the community has just rallied around and stuff, it makes you happy that you live in this area.
“[For us], it's closure. It's peace. We’re going to spoil him. Because my birthday's on Christmas Day, it's the best Christmas present and birthday present that anyone can have.”
A GoFundMe has been set up by group member Sonya on behalf of Boris's family to help with ongoing veterinary expenses. If you would like to donate, see this link.