Laddy spent the weekend in a tree after chasing a squirrel

Aug 14, 2013 09:33 GMT  ·  By

The owner of a Collie has lost her pooch on Friday and she thought the pooch wouldn't turn up. He had got himself stuck in a tree, possible after chasing a squirrel.

On Sunday, Cynthia Weeks got a call from the police who told her they found 7-year-old border collie Laddy just two yards away.

Weeks had started a massive search, putting up posters and setting up a Facebook page. She had scoured the neighborhood and she was surprised to hear the dog had been found so close to home.

"I asked where they found him, and the officer said, 'You'll never believe this,'" she recalls for Quad-City Times.

He was stuck up a tree on a neighbor's property and he had been there all weekend.

"I'd been hearing this dog barking, but I didn't want to be a complaining neighbor and, besides, my wife and I are dog lovers. [...] When I was outside early Sunday, I heard a whining, and I knew something wasn't right. This time, it sounded in distress," Ron Stevenson described.

He hadn't thought about looking up until that day, and he spotted the pooch trapped behind branches.

The first thing he did was pull Laddy down as the dog sounded like he was in distress. He then called the police to find his owner.

"They got here pretty fast, but I was getting impatient. [...] I didn't know if the dog would bite me, but I just sort of shimmmied up the tree. I grabbed him by the collar and sort of pulled him. I said, 'It's time for you to get out of this tree,'" he remembers.

As he worried that they wouldn't believe him, he snapped a photo of the animal.

"I had taken a picture, thank goodness. I showed it to the police when they got there, of course. By then, I'm standing there with a dog I had reported being up a tree," he says.

Officers had noticed Weeks' fliers posted in the area and they were able to return the dog.