An owner is giving back to organisations that helped reunite her with her lost dog after spending three ‘sleepless’ weeks searching.
Jo Doherty, from Ashton, Manchester, described the moment that her partner told her their Korean Jindo Gianni had run off after being spooked by joggers as ‘horrendous’.
The family got Gianni only two weeks prior, from The Dog Team UK, a charity which rescues dogs from the meat trade in Asia, and rehome them in the UK.
She was just adjusting to her life in the UK as a family pet so she was still very nervous, but Jo described her as ‘a lovely dog’ straight away.
“You want to do the right thing and get a rescue dog to give them a better chance of living. She deserves it, after what she’s been through.” Jo said.
Gianni was bred purely for dog meat production, and had suffered cruel treatment and inhumane living conditions before being rescued, and it is due to her past that Jo believes she was spooked by the unfamiliar sight of a group of joggers.
Jo’s partner had taken Gianni on her morning walk around Chadwick Dam when she slipped her lead after being startled, and was too scared to return, despite his best efforts to coax her back.
Jo took to Facebook to create a post about Gianni’s disappearance, which she also shared to several local groups for greater coverage, as well as contacting Dogs Lost, the service that assists missing dog cases.
Within a short space of time the family were flooded with offers of support from members of the public including local volunteer-run organisations Greater Manchester Lost Dog, Search and Rescue, The Lost Dog Trapping Team and Canine Capture UK CIC, all who offered their services.
These organisations then helped to share the appeal across social media, as well as laying humane ‘food traps’ to try and establish Gianni’s whereabouts, and to hopefully lure her close enough to be recaptured.
Jo explained: “She was going to the areas and feeding, because we’d captured her on camera. I’d even seen her with my own eyes two or three times but she wouldn’t come back to us.
“No chance we were getting her back that way, the charities say, don’t chase them, don’t whistle, don’t call their name, just walk slowly and don’t make eye contact so you try everything to get her back.”
Everybody was additionally concerned that the wintery conditions would also cause greater distress and harm to Gianni, and bad weather meant that it was harder to get out to search for her.
“The weather didn’t help and because it was in the October months it gets dark early, and it’s cold. It was horrendous.” Jo added.
“My partner was out every single night looking for her, it was awful, he had to come back and change his clothes several times because it was just so wet.
“We spent nights not sleeping, worrying about the dog. We weren’t able to leave the house in case we needed to get out somewhere. It takes over your life.
“The charities can’t do all the work so obviously you need to help out too. You’ve got to always have your phone charged, have it on you. It was bad, it's like losing a kid in a way.”
After three weeks of numerous sightings and tireless work by the family and volunteers from the organisations who spent hours a day combing the countryside for the missing dog, a member of the public helped to finally reunite Gianni with her family.
“Somebody shared a photo of her in a car park which was over the road from the Chadwick Dam area, and had posted it to a Mosley Facebook page, which we were then tagged in.
“My partner started heading towards that area, but there was also a lady who was with her children in the car, she was taking them to McDonald's and she said to her children ‘oh there’s a dog missing round here’ and if it weren’t for her little boy saying ‘Mummy let’s look for the dog’ we wouldn’t have got her back.
“She found my contact details and called me, and said ‘we’ve found your dog’. She’d managed to get Gi into a corner. She’d gone down into the bushes and laid there, but she’d got herself trapped, and that’s how they managed to get her to come to them.”
Despite her ordeal, including being hit by a car, Gianni was miraculously in good condition and had only lost a little weight, as she’d been able to eat some of the food left out for her.
She is currently back with The Dog Team UK rescue centre for rehabilitation, but Jo hopes that in a few weeks time she’ll be able to return to the family home.
“I just kind of wish she knew from the start how much we loved her, because she might have come back willingly, she wouldn’t have been out that long.” Jo said.
The experience inspired Jo to set up a GoFundMe for rescue, as well as Greater Manchester Lost Dog, Search and Rescue, The Lost Dog Trapping Team and Canine Capture UK for all the hard work they put in helping find their pet.
The fundraising page, which you can donate to here, has a £1000 target which will be split amongst the organisations.
Jo also praised the public for coming together to help them in their search, suggesting that it brought a sense of community in such a difficult time.
She said: “The public have been great. She was spotted all over Ashton, people were getting in contact to tell us they’ve seen her, people would invite you in for brews and stuff like that, and would tell us they’d seen her in farmer’s fields opposite their houses.
“We’ve made so many friends because of this as well, which is one good thing to come out of it I suppose.”
