Lindsay Puffer has made sure that absolutely everyone she can think of knows about Tucker, her little, lost dog.
She spent six hours walking through the cold this past Thursday, ringing door bells, handing out hundreds of flyers and searching for the little Pomeranian-poodle cross under sheds and stairs. But Tucker, lost a week to the day, was nowhere to be found.
“It was exhausting, we walked everywhere,” says Puffer.
Tucker, eight years old, small, shy and known to be skittish, went missing from his St. Albert grooming appointment at Mission Hill Pet Planet on Thursday, Nov. 27.
He had been dropped off by Puffer’s mother around noon and was put back into his kennel when his grooming was complete. The latch was not secure.
The situation became worse when a delivery man opened the front door to the business while someone else opened the doors to the room where the dogs were waiting, and Tucker ran out.
Puffer’s mother discovered someone let the dog out when she returned in the afternoon. The groomer had left a voicemail but nobody noticed it. Puffer’s mother called her daughter and they both ventured into the snowstorm to find him.
No luck was to be had.
“What I would guess, and I’m not sure, is that the delivery man was making a lot of noise and he just ran out,” says Puffer. “He spooks easily.”
Tucker has been a part of Puffer’s life since she picked him up as a puppy, eight years ago. He’s a charismatic dog, full of energy and spirit, who makes everyone laugh with his “hilarious acts”, she says.
She remembers coming home from work and he’d sit on the couch and stare at her with big eyes. He would always wait to hear his favourite words, ‘walk’ and ‘grandma’, and then lose his mind and run around in joy, she says.
He loves his toys and he loves to play catch. She calls him her baby.
But Tucker is also easily scared. One day, he ran off because a neighbour was fixing the roof and banging a hammer. He was afraid of the noise but they quickly found him, says Puffer.
The groomer had a file on him that said that he is nervous, she adds.
“They should have taken extra precautions,” she says.
The owner of Pet Planet, Glenna Puchyr, was not at her business the day that Tucker went missing. She says the store has now established new policies about when doors can be opened and need to be locked. They’ve also paid for a dog tracker to help the family, she says.
Tucker has not been seen since the day he disappeared.
There were reports of a small dog running along St. Albert Trail that afternoon. The last confirmed sighting was by a woman who saw him running down Sunset Boulevard near Sterling Drive at 5 p.m.
Another woman said she saw someone pick him up on the trail an hour later. She didn’t see if it was a man or a woman, or whether the person took him into their car.
If someone sees Tucker, Puffer asks that they call her.
He may have lost his collar, so her phone number is not attached to him any longer. But he could still be wearing a red bandana. Tucker also has a prominent underbite and is very small, she says.
The little dog may now be in survival mode, having spent a week in the cold.
Puffer says the best way to approach him is with food. They should not chase him, look him in the eye and approach slowly, she says. She also asks people to look under stairs and inside their sheds. He likes to sit beneath things, she says.
This weekend, Puffer will be out again with the dog tracker, searching and asking people for help. She still hopes her baby comes home.
“It’s been probably one of the roughest weeks of my life,” she says. “I don’t know where he is or if someone picked him up or if he is no longer here. And that to me is the hardest thing.”
