Missing for nearly two months, dog reunited with owner

For 53 days, Barbara Bagley waited for news of her Shetland sheepdog, Dooley.

The 4-year-old dog vanished after a December car accident in a remote swath of Nevada that broke Bagley’s ribs and punctured her lungs. Her husband, Brad Vom Baur, and their other sheepdog, Delaney, were killed.

“But something inside me told me Dooley was still alive out there,” Bagley, 48, told the Associated Press. “I wasn’t 100% sure, but I didn’t grieve for Dooley like I did for my husband and our other dog.”

Bagley, who lives in Salt Lake City, and a group of Nevada residents who heard about her plight on Facebook spent weeks combing the sagebrush near Battle Mountain, a blip of a town along Interstate 80. People there had repeatedly a spotted a skittish, “Lassie-type” dog.

On Feb. 18, searchers finally cornered Dooley, who’d subsisted on roadkill and water from nearby ranches. Bagley rushed to the scene.

“Barbara got next to us and said three times, ‘You think he’ll remember me?’ ” searcher Shannon Sustacha told the AP. “When Barbara opened the door and looked at him, she said, ‘My beautiful boy, my beautiful boy, you’re home.’ Oh, boy, all of us cried.”

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