When you get a pet, they quickly become an important part of your family as you care for them and watch them grow.
So the idea of being separated from your furry friend can be incredibly upsetting.
One couple recently experienced this heartbreak as their seven-month-old miniature dachshund went missing on a 350-acre farm in Middleton Tyas, North Yorkshire.
Fern Holmes and Doug Dinwiddie were worried little Floyd wouldn't be able to make it out there on his own, so searched high and low for the pup.
The tiny dog got scared last Friday, after another dog started barking and he "took flight" disappearing into an oilseed rape field.
Thankfully, after a few days, they were able to lure him back home using some of his favourite treats - including bacon.
The idea to do this was given to the couple by Mandy Butler, a specialist dog tracker from the Lost Dog Trapping Team on Facebook.
Mandy explained that Floyd was in survival mode and would not come if people were calling his name - it would take something more.
The smell of tasty food.
So they began cooking bacon on disposable barbecues outside and leaving open tins of sardines and trails of beef stock around to lure him back
Finally the puppy returned home on Monday, rather messy, but luckily unharmed.
Immediately he began smothering his family with licks.
Fern, 32, recalls feeling hysterically happy when she was reunited with the tiny pooch.
"I was so tired after no sleep all weekend. I just couldn't quite believe my eyes," she said.
"We felt such relief. He has got away with blue murder since. No-one tells him off anymore."
Dog stories have been a big hit with our readers recently, with people going wild over the four-legged creatures big and small.
A giant dog named Rowlf, who still thought he was a puppy was especially popular.
The two-year-old Newfoundland poodle has been with the Pankhurst family since the summer of 2018 and in that time has grown from a tiny puppy to a massive, six-foot tall dog (when standing on his hind legs), weighing more than seven stone.
But despite his size, the fluff ball still thinks he's a baby and won't stop sitting on his owner's lap - even though he doesn't fit at all.
His owner, Craig, a dad-of-two from Thurstaston, said: "He's a legend - he's huge. He doesn't really know his own size, he thinks he's a little puppy or the same size as the bulldogs.
"He's very funny. Rowlf will go to get on a normal-size [dog] bed and just sit down on it. He is so much bigger than the other two. He's not clumsy, but he does like to lay on things and if that is a tiny bed, he tries to make himself as small as possible."
