A border collie named Tilly, two years old, went missing after his owners, Linda and Mike Oswald, were involved in an accident that caused Tilly to be thrown from the vehicle.
Following the tragic tragedy, the bereaved owners launched a campaign to track for their long-lost puppy.
Mrs. Oswald made her appeal on Facebook, writing: “Today, my husband Mike and I were involved in an automobile accident at Highway 41 and Hayden.
We’re OK, but my dog Tilly is nowhere to be seen. He was ejected from the building and was later observed fleeing north.
A reddish-brown man with black stripes on his face, he is described as follows: His fur is medium in length, and he has a bobtail.
He was last spotted sprinting across the Prairie between the intersection of Hayden Avenue and Interstate 41.
Two days after the accident, the couple got a phone call from Travis Potter, a sheep farmer who lives close to the scene of the incident.
He said that he had heard of Tilly’s disappearance and had decided to go hunt for him. Tilly was hiding in the sheep enclosure when Mr. Potter came upon her, much to his astonishment.
Mr. Potter informed a local news site that a few sheep had gone missing from his property, and he thought that Tilly had seen them fleeing and responded to his herding instincts by herding them to safety.
“It wasn’t like, ‘Oh, where did this dog come from, how did it get here,’ it was more like, ‘I believe that dog was attempting to herd,'” he said.
Tilly was surrendered to a police station, where he was reunited with his frightened owners after a short time.
“The first thing he did when we got back together was run in and drink out of the toilet, something he has never done before,” Ms. Oswald said in an interview with The Spokesman-Review. He was quite thirsty.”
In addition, Ms. Oswald verified that Tilly has shown his herding tendencies on prior times by noting, “He would herd anything.”
When I visit the dog park, he attempts to herd everyone into a single group,” I said.
Ms. Oswald went on to say that she had sobbed “every day” since Tilly had been taken away and that she was relieved to get him back home.
