Little Alfie is skin and bones and elderly Tui is a few kilograms lighter with a few claws missing, but after 20 days lost in the hills, the two dogs are lapping up the comforts of home.
Glen Holland, his wife Tanya Oziel and family have been searching for the pair since they went missing from their Hope home in early March, and on Tuesday morning they got the phone call that would bring them home.
Alfie, a six-month-old Fox Terrier walked into the Ford family home in the Aniseed Valley and Glen and his daughter, Kyla Holland, later found an exhausted Tui up the Mt Molita track.
“I was literally putting on my mountainbike gear and heard a hysterical Tanya on the phone,” Glen says. “Apparently, Alfie walked straight into their sunroom and sat down. He was exhausted.”
A pig hunter had heard a dog barking up Mt Molita, so after being reunited with Alfie, Glen and Kyla headed up the track.
“We only got a few hundred metres up the road and she was standing in the middle of the road and ran straight to us.”
The ordeal has taken its toll on the pair which on Tanya’s orders were taken straight to the vet for a check over and are now rehabilitating at home.
“I don’t think they would have lasted much longer,” he says. “Tui is exhausted. She’s 13 which is like someone in their 80s or 90s. We just got them back in the nick of time.”
Kyla says Tui was “a barrel” before they got lost, but not anymore. She has lost about six kilograms and little Alfie is now a skinny we fella.
Both Glen and Tanya say the community support has been huge as they sought to bring their dogs home.
“We’ve had heaps of people leaving messages and out looking for them. Even people we don’t know. It’s surprising how many people are out and about in the hills.”
Tanya, who is a city girl from Sydney’s eastern suburbs where they have “designer dogs that are always on leashes that are fluffy and puffy”, has been overwhelmed by the response from the community response.
“It truly took a village and your love and support will never be forgotten.”
Meanwhile, at home, Alfie is licking Tui’s sore paws where her claws have been torn out and while she just wants to rest now, youth already has him bright-eyed and bushy tailed again.
The family followed the advice of local dog tracker Don Schwass, and now the dogs are home, they will be wearing tracking collars. Ironically, Tui had only recently had a GPS tracker, Tractive, removed from her collar because she had become “a couch potato” in her old age.
