A dauntless dog is home and recovering after an incredible journey of escape, injury and a fierce determination to get back home.
Brieze is an eight-month-old collie mix who is terrified of people. His owner, Sarah Walter, had to leave him with a caretaker when she took her other dog to a chiropractor. He had been to the woman’s home in Gloucestershire, England previously, but he was still not comfortable. In a panicked state, he escape the home and vanished in a large field.
“He’d been there before and he knows her,” Walter said. “But I had a phone call to say he had escaped. He’s a bit like an eel and gets past you if he wants to. He had managed to squeeze through the secure paddock and into an exterior area.”
Walter could only think the worst when she was informed by police that her boy had been hit by a car as he tried to cross the M5 highway. Miraculously, he survived, but fled once again.
“I was inconsolable. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t think he would have run. I thought he would have stayed in the field,” Walter said. “I spent the next four hours searching on foot and in my car, up and down the motorway and across the surrounding farmland without success.”
She returned home, devastated, and convinced that Brieze was dead after being struck by a vehicle moving at 70 mph. (Perhaps there was a slow-down at the time he was hit?) But at around 5am the next day, she received a surprising phone call from her mother. Brieze was standing outside her home!
Walter had visited his “grandparents'” home in Leckhampton before, but had only traveled by car, and not from his dog-sitter’s house. Yet there he was, barking at the window for someone to let him in.
“He wouldn’t have had a clue how to get there and every time I’ve gone there with him, I’ve done the journey in a car. He must have an in-built navigation system.”
Brieze’s 10-mile trip took 18 hours, and amazingly, he was unscathed.
“He’s still shattered now,” Walter said of Brieze, who just needs to get some well-deserved rest. “He’s come through his journey quite well.”
The intrepid dog with no fear of busy thoroughfares will soon be seeing a behaviorist to work on his extreme fear of humans.
