Dog is Reunited with his Family after FIVE Years Missing

Eddie was missing for FIVE years, but was happily reunited with his family, thanks to vets at our Manchester PDSA Pet Hospital and his microchip.

Back in 2011 Yorkshire terrier Eddie, then eight-years-old, was staying with his owners’ sister-in-law while they were on holiday. He went missing from the garden in Fallowfield, North Manchester and sadly, despite a massive search, he couldn’t be found.

His owner Sandra said: “Neighbours were searching the streets, we put up posters everywhere, alerted all the local vets and rescue centres, reported it to police and registered him on all the websites. We even offered a reward, but he had simply vanished. With each week that passed, we knew the chances of finding him decreased. It was awful.”

No-one knows what happened to Eddie but, skip ahead to 2016, and he found himself in the care of Jenette, who lives in Reddish, Stockport, just half a mile away from Sandra’s home. Jenette took on Eddie, now 13, from a neighbour who was struggling to look after him.

Jenette said: “I have two dogs of my own and adore Yorkies, so when I heard he was in need of a home I didn’t hesitate. One of the first things I did was take him to PDSA to get him checked and chipped. They scanned to check if he already had a chip and I was shocked to discover he’d been registered missing five years ago.”

PDSA Vet Nurse Helen was able to contact Eddie’s owners to give them the good news.

Sandra and her family were astonished: “we still had conversations about Eddie – what he might be doing, if he was being looked after, if he was even still alive. But never in a million years did we think we’d get him back after all this time. Best of all, he arrived home on my daughter’s 16th birthday! I printed off one of Eddie’s ‘missing’ posters from the computer for when she arrived home from school, then when she came in and saw Eddie next to it she was over the moon and said it was the best birthday present ever!”

Every year, thousands of pets across the UK go missing. Sadly, many are never reunited with their owners, but microchipped pets stand a far better chance of a happy homecoming. It is now a legal requirement for all dogs in the UK to be microchipped once they are eight weeks old.