November 22, 2013

Tia a young beagle escaped the family home when a surveyor entered with regards to a house sale.

After a number of sightings the owners contacted us to see if we could help and after 4 days of her still not being caught we went down to help.  We arrived at the last know sighting and Tiga was happy he had got the scent and off we went following a number of country lanes but eventually we headed back down a busy road and hill along the same route that Tia had travelled when she first escaped but in the opposite direction. It seemed therefore that she was trying to find her way home.

Tiga tracked to within 4 minutes of home and on the busiest night of fireworks we were bombarded with them and narrowly missed a rocket travelling horizontally! This frightened Tiga and what with this and the thick sulphur smog Tiga was unable to continue but it did appear that Tia had also been frightened by the fireworks and had not made it home.

We returned the next morning and with much meandering around this same area we picked up the scent again and ended up tracking back up to where the sightings had been. We tracked a long day and more sightings came in as posters continued to go up and as we spoke to people as we went.  Unfortunately the sightings were all from a few days earlier so we continued to track her route in the hope that we would eventually catch up with her.

There was one road that she was using regularly so we sat out in groups in several different places in the hope of spotting her but it was not to be.

We had a sighting of her sunbathing on the cliff top which Tiga confirmed that it was her and followed in the direction that she went. It appeared that Tia was staying in the same area and using a number of footpaths and roads to travel around but each time there was a sighting and people tried to catch her she ran off and did not return so we were continually on the move.

The last sighting we had was late one night outside a pub again on her patch. When we were told about the sighting the next morning we resumed the hunt and as Tiga was now very tired after four days of tracking and many many miles walked I decided to give Tiga a rest.

It was time to bring Yogi in on his first mission and he immediately picked up the scent and went off in the exact direction that we were told she went the night before. It was a gamble using Yogi but he had to put his training into practice sometime and now was the time. Yogi continued on a route that Tiga had been before and then he took us a slightly different way but I decided to go with it. I advised the owners not to follow this time as we didn’t want their scent being spread further afield if Yogi was wrong. On we went out of the housing estate along country lanes for several miles. When I expected Yogi to turn right and head back, he didn’t he continued left  and I still gave him the benefit of doubt until after some way more he wanted to continue at a crossroads and not turn right again. This was time to pull him off and head back towards the village where she had been seen before which was not far away.

We called it a day thinking Yogi was not ready and needed more training.

The next day I had a call from the owner to say that Tia had given herself up to a senior citizen and was safe and well. I then  asked where she was picked up and had I allowed Yogi to continue he only had to make one more turn and he would have been in the same road.

So after 10 days Tia was safely reunited with her very happy owners.

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