A rescue dog who went missing for five weeks was found miles from home lodging in a farmer’s sheep shed.
Bella, a four-year-old rescue, had only been in the UK for six days before she managed to sneak past her owners and through their side gate.
She’d been brought over from Portugal, where owners Jackie Sweeny and her partner Eric have a second home, but was here for less than a week before she escaped.
But the couple were in mandatory quarantine, and couldn’t even chase after the pup they’d recently welcomed into their family.
Jackie, 61, from Leek, in Staffordshire, said: “My husband just brought his bike from the front of the house to the back and Bella slipped through the gate. She just shot off and we weren’t allowed to chase after her.
“I was traumatised. I knew she’d ran up the main road, so I’ve no idea how she wasn’t hit by a car. I put a message on Facebook and she’d been sighted a few times but no-one could catch her.
“Your life goes on hold when they’re missing. I feel as if I was just surviving because I couldn’t do anything.”
Little Bella had a tough start to life in Portugal, suspected to have been bred for hunting, but was scared of the guns, she was left abandoned on the streets.
Jackie said: “She attached herself to a herd of goats in Portugal, but the farmer already had a lot of dogs so couldn’t keep her too.
“She got pregnant and had a litter of pups who all sadly died, and ended up pregnant again shortly after and all her puppies found homes.”
When Jackie’s previous rescue passed away, she decided to adopt a dog from abroad. When she spotted Bella, she fell in love, and spent a month in the foreign country taking care of her before arranging to have her transported to the UK.
Despite numerous sightings in the first four weeks of Bella being missing, no-one had seen the dog for nearly a week until Jackie got a call from a vets in Uttoxeter, 20 miles from her home.
The 61-year-old said: “I had a call on the Thursday to say one of the vet's clients mentioned there was a stray dog on their farm and had been there for a few days.
“I managed to make contact with the farmer’s wife who said Bella had been spotted on the farm a few times since Monday. They thought she was a fox at first, before realising she was wearing a collar!”
The farm, in Ellastone, around 15 miles from Jackie’s home, had a sheep barn with CCTV which had captured footage of Bella sneaking in to take a snooze.
To keep Bella on the land, the farmer’s wife bought the dog a marrowbone from the butchers, which gave the local Lost Dog Capture Team enough time to get to the farm and set up a lure to catch Bella.
Jackie added: “The Lost Dog Capture Team reached out and jumped into action to help us.
“They were familiar with this kind of situation and knew how she might behave or react.
“The team headed up there with a trap cage and some food that they placed in the sheep shed, and before the team left the lane of the farm before an alarm went off and Bella was caught.”
When Jackie received the call that her dog had been successfully caught, she said she was ‘ecstatic and couldn’t stop shaking’.
There was a tearful reunion on Thursday, August 12 - five weeks after the dog ran off - and Bella had no idea what all the fuss was about.
Jackie added: “Because we’d not heard anything for about six days, I was beginning to give up hope thinking she’d been shot or hit by a car, but in reality, she’d just made some friends in a sheep shed and got comfortable!
“When she arrived back home she just wagged her tail and had a fuss, had a drink and got straight into bed! I think she was relieved to be back home, but she was exhausted. The next day she barely raised her head off the pillow.”
