Dog gone - then found (heart-warming story)

By Courtney Flynn
Tribune staff reporter
6:01 PM CDT, September 14, 2007

Robin Tennant typically keeps a close watch on her beloved pooch, Zoe, a 12-year-old Boston terrier who lost one eye to glaucoma and has cataracts in the other. But about two weeks ago, the black-and-white dog with the graying face wandered away from Tennant's front yard, and the Evanston resident feared the worst.

"I was sure she was dead—she's blind and almost deaf," Tennant said Friday. "The shelters told me to assume after one week she would be dead."

But Tennant continued to look for her dog. She traveled up and down the North Shore posting hundreds of fliers.

Then Thursday—13 days later—Tennant came home from synagogue to find a thin, dirty Zoe waiting inside her home. A neighbor had rescued the dog from a 6-foot-deep window well only 40 feet from Tennant's home.

"It's really a miracle," Tennant said Friday. "It's almost a spiritual experience having her back when I thought she was dead. I'm so grateful."

Neighbor Ruth Singer knew Zoe had been missing but said she never would have known the dog was trapped in her window well if her longtime gardener hadn't been trimming a hedge that covered the area. Zoe rarely barks, and nobody heard a peep out of her while she was gone.

When the gardener saw Zoe, "he thought she was dead," Singer said. "But then she moved."

The gardener was elderly, Singer was dressed up on her way to synagogue and Tennant wasn't home, so Singer called another neighbor, Susan Karp, for help.

Knowing that Karp is about six-months pregnant, Singer said she wanted her to be careful and perhaps just get some food and water to the dog.

"I didn't want a pregnant woman and a dog stuck down there," Singer said.

But Karp said she reached down into the well as Zoe reached up to her, and she was able to rescue the dog.

"I was expecting her to look awful," Karp said Friday. "She definitely looked thinner than the last time I saw her and she was dirty, but other than that, she looked pretty good."

Karp quickly put Zoe on a leash and the dog led her right back to Tennant's home, where Karp was able to leave the dog with the housekeeper.

After a full checkup from the vet, Zoe was deemed to be perfectly healthy, though she'd lost 6 pounds—half her original weight of about 12 pounds.

"I was so excited," Karp said. "It was really just such a happy ending."

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