When Micaela Sawyer saw the photo of a weak, emaciated dog shuddering in the snow, she hoped desperately it was her Murphy.
The 18-month-old labrador, with a dulled red coat and legs riddled with injuries, was unmistakably the dog she and her partner, Jim Barnes, had raised as a puppy, she said.
For more than 50 days, Barnes and Murphy had been the focus of an extensive search in the wilderness of western Canada after they vanished in mid-October.
But incredibly, after weeks of hope and despair, Murphy was home at last.
“He is badly injured, with major swelling, puncture wounds (possibly from a dog or coyote), a broken front paw, and scabs all over,” Sawyer wrote on Facebook, sharing an image of a dog, his right paw in a bright red cast. “His behavior has changed too, from a quiet, independent dog to one who barks at every sound and howls when I leave the room.”
Not much mystery here: something went very wrong, the dude’s body ended up somewhere it’s going to be difficult to find (possibly in the river), and the dog wasn’t used to being alone in the wilderness and was traumatized, assuming it really is the same dog. It isn’t unusual for the body of someone who dies in the wilderness to take months or years to find, even with intense searching, unfortunately.