MUM REUNITED WITH HER BOY
A TOWNSVILLE woman will never forget the day she returned home from an interstate wedding to an empty back garden.
Melissa Kearney was devastated to find her three-year-old staffy cross Brutus had vanished from her Thuringowa Central home on November 3 last year.
Ms Kearney set out on a mission to find her beloved pet putting up lost dog flyers offering a $300 reward and trawling local Facebook pages for sightings.
“We posted him on the Townsville pages and we had so many people sending us photos asking if it was him. We had at least 50 dogs sent to us,” she said.
“I gave flyers to local vets and to the postman and to all the tradies who came to our house for jobs.”
After countless leads turned up dry, Ms Kearney thought it was time to let go and on Wednesday cancelled Brutus’s council registration.
But that night Ms Kearney did a last-minute scroll through the Save a Stray Townsville Facebook page and came across a familiar face.
Ms Kearney was reunited with Brutus on Thursday, 12km from the family house near the Townsville Golf Club in Rosslea. A golf course worker had been feeding Brutus who appeared to have been living in drains around the area. It took Ms Kearney 24 hours to catch Brutus as he was skittish and traumatised by the experience.
She believes he may have been stolen from her home. “He has some holes in his leg so might have been used for fighting,” she said.
The family have beefed up security spending “thousands” on upgrading their backyard fence and installing a CCTV camera.
Ms Kearney said she was relieved to have Brutus home.
“I am so glad we found him before this cold weather.
“He is sticking to me now that he is at home. I can’t even go to the toilet without him coming with me,” she said.
“Just don’t give up on your missing pets.
“Follow every lead because we thought it was just another wild goose chase and it turned out to be him.”