It was the last day of a hot July camping trip. We were in the Oregon wilderness five hours from home and my girlfriend Marisa and I went rafting downriver. A friend offered to drive Leo, our border collie, to meet us at the end.
Leo was our baby. We got him from a pound as this crazy pup and, with training, he became obedient and loving. We played competition Frisbee and went on long runs; he’d be off the leash but always by my side.
When we got off the river, the friend who drove Leo was laughing, saying he’d leapt out of the car and taken off back up river. Her flippancy indicated she knew where he was. But she didn’t. We were in the middle of nowhere. Just a road, a river and cliffs. Marisa and I searched into the night. The next day I was horrified when I almost tripped over an animal carcass. I thought a cougar had got Leo. It was a dead deer. We returned home that night and cried like babies.
We made multiple trips back. Marisa posted flyers. We got lots of phone calls but couldn’t always act on them because it was a five-hour drive away. I couldn’t live not knowing what had happened, so I hired a man whose sniffer dog was known locally for finding the bodies of two missing girls. Nothing conclusive came from it. He’d been missing for a month when a lady said she’d found a border collie and described Leo. We drove down but it was a shorthaired female. We gave up hope.
That summer I became a bit destructive. I drank more than I should have. Little things upset me, like him not being there to lick my breakfast plate. By October, the phone calls stopped. That winter was brutal. He couldn’t have survived.
Then, in April, a woman started leaving messages. She sounded a little manic and called at odd hours saying she’d seen Leo in her yard. I told her to stop wasting our time, but she was so intense: “I am looking at your flyer and I’m telling you I see him every morning like clockwork.” She described a freckle on his nose. It was undoubtedly Leo.
We drove to her small town. It was only a gas station and some rural homes. We pulled into the station, opened the car door and there was Leo, just standing there. We took one step towards him and he got this mischievous look in his eyes and ran off. He was like a coyote. He didn’t recognise us – we were just people. That was the start of a hunt through the town.
We developed a map of his daily sightings. The gas station owner had started leaving him breakfast. Another lady said he came to her barn in the hills. We figured he slept there. We even saw him cross a four-lane highway; he sat at the side, waited for a car to pass, looked both ways, then crossed. We got close to him a couple of times, but he always ran. It was torture to see him and not be able to play. I resigned myself to the fact that he was happy and healthy, but now a wild dog.
After three days, we headed home, with Marisa crying. Then the lady who’d originally spotted him called and said to wait at her property in the morning. We couldn’t give up. I called a trapper company who brought a 10ft cougar trap. We baited it with meat and drove home, unsure of success. A day later, she called: Leo was in the cage. We sped back, worried he might have post-traumatic stress and try to tear our throats out.
When we got there, Leo stared at us with his ears up, coyote-style. But when we were close enough to smell, his ears dropped and he did this move where he’s madly in love and falls on his side and wiggles. We were crying and petting him. It was very emotional. He had fleshy tumours dangling off him; he was infested with ticks. I threw my Frisbee and he did a backflip without hesitation. He hadn’t forgotten a single trick.
He was so loving and happy to come home. He was heavier than before, rippling with muscle. That summer he was the ring bearer at our wedding.
We now have a son, and Leo never leaves his side. We still don’t fence Leo in because we know he won’t run away from us. Now he runs to look for us.
• As told to Candice Pires
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