West Hazel Dell — It’s not quite “Moby Dick,” but by the time Patrick Higbie, an animal control officer with Clark County Animal Protection & Control, caught Milo, he had been chasing the Chihuahua mix for five days.
It started when Higbie saw Milo wandering around near Lake Shore Elementary School and gave chase on Jan. 7.
Milo slipped away and escaped in the residential area near the school. Higbie had seen Milo before, though. Someone posted the dog’s photo on the Lost and Found Pets in Vancouver Facebook page.
A few days later, Higbie got a call that a dog was loose in someone’s front yard near 78th Street, and went to check on it, since he didn’t want the dog to run out into the busy street. He figured it was Milo.
“He’d kind of become my nemesis by that point,” Higbie said. He set a box trap and on the morning on Jan. 12, he saw that it was indeed Milo, who had gone missing around Christmas.
He called the dog’s owner, who met him at animal control for the emotional reunion between the happy dog and the weeping owner. Higbie said that when pets go missing that long, owners start to lose hope.
“This is probably one of the longest ones I’ve had in a while,” Higbie said about the duration Milo was away. “I’ve had maybe around a month or so, but not often. It sometimes happens around the Fourth of July. A lot of dogs go missing then. They get freaked out and go into hiding.”
He added that it seemed Milo was in good health, and it’s possible he survived so long on his own by eating cat food or people feeding him.
