10-month-old puppy missing from Hamptons found safe: 'So Grateful'

NORTH SEA, N.Y. — A distraught North Sea family whose 10-month-old puppy disappeared without a trace last week — believed to have been possibly stolen — is back home safe.

Oscar, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, was last seen on Tuesday, June 25 at his home, his distraught owner Sharon Lynch told Patch.

Shortly after Patch announced Oscar on Tuesday, July 2, Lynch said she received a call from a Hampton Bays woman who told her she had seen a Facebook post by a young man saying Oscar was well, but he did not know how to find his owner. The man, a driver from Mastic, found her number and called.

“He said he had found the dog around Southampton, had bathed him and hadn't been able to get him to a shelter, but that his niece had Oscar,” she said. The man told her he didn't have time yet to take him to a vet or a shelter to have his chip scanned, she said.

The next day, the man and his niece arranged to meet Lynch outside the Panera in Hampton Bays.

“Oscar was wagging his tail as I drove,” she said.

Lynch said, from her experience, she has some hard-won advice for other pet owners: She said Oscar, who was in her fully fenced yard, had only been outside for about 20 minutes when she noticed he was gone.

“We're fully fenced off, but he found a small piece,” she said. “If he was running after a squirrel, nothing would stop him.”

He said to Patch, “It's my fault I took his collar off because the rides were over for the day and we didn't stake the perimeter of the yard. A little chick did.”

Lynch also said she didn't realize that even if a dog has a microchip, the chip doesn't GPS the dog. It must be scanned by a professional and most importantly, registered with a security company that will send a collar tag from any phone and also include the dog's name and the dog's owners ID.

Describing her ordeal, Lynch said that on the day Oscar went missing, she and her husband and daughter drove until 2 a.m. calling him. Fortunately, Lynch said, he was not found injured or worse. “We thought then that maybe someone had taken him and started calling vets, shelters – notifying everyone we could.”

Teddy Henn of Long Island Lost Dog Search and Rescue, a tracker who has worked tirelessly to bring many dogs safely home, headed straight to the area with his dog Winston.

“We found that Oscar went up Old Trail Road, from Roses Grove Road, and then his scent disappeared,” Lynch said at the time. “It's possible he was picked up and taken. He could be anywhere – Riverhead, Deer Park, Setauket.”

Lynch, her husband and daughter were devastated.

“Oh, my God. It feels like we've lost a family member,” she said at the time. “It's unbelievable. It's like when you lose a person, your brain cells are fuzzy, you can't think straight. That's how it feels.”

Unfortunately, she said, her family had been duped twice by people who said they had Oscar, but despite showing up where it was listed — “I sat there for two hours, my heart racing,” she said — and both were false leads. Scammers who capitalize on a person's grief, he said, “are disgusting.”

Oscar, he said, had just recovered from a broken leg, too, another cause for concern.

Describing her beloved pup, Lynch said: “She's never met a human she doesn't love. She's the friendliest animal we've ever met and we've had many dogs. She's super, super friendly, playful, and loving is all you have to do all you do is sit down and he'll jump into your lap.”

Oscar's disappearance was a fluke, Lynch said. “It was complete loss and grief,” he said. “Last night I sat down to watch TV for the first time since it happened and the fact that he wasn't there to jump into my arms — it's a hole in my soul. It's awful. I knew I loved him, but he didn't know how much, the depth of it, until it wasn't there.'

After returning home, Lynch said Oscar “spent an hour running around the house at top speed. His tail only stopped wagging when he finally went to sleep and started wagging the next morning the second he woke up. his tail was wagging in the cage Wake me up!”

Lynch said although the man who found her dog made it home, there are others who are miserable — and to them she said, “The thieves need to know that many thousands of people are ready to help finding a lost dog The sheer volume of good Samaritans is endless and this week has restored my faith in humanity. , even from neighbors”.

And, he also said, there are dog trackers to help. “These dogs and cats and hamsters are family members, not just animals,” she said.

For someone who finds a lost dog, Lynch urged bringing the animal to the police, local vet or a shelter.

Lynch said she is grateful for the outpouring of love from the community who stepped in in the face of a sea of ​​care to help. “We are so grateful. I had two scammers but 573 Facebook shares. All these wonderful people far outweigh the bad,” she said.