LAKE WORTH BEACH, Fla. — Keep the faith. That's what pet detective Jamie Katz kept telling her client. Through both their efforts, Milo is home safe and sound.
"My heart just dropped," Anita Maharaj said. "It was like my heart was racing really quick."
It's a happy reunion.
"She had him in her arms and handed him over to me and he just started licking my face and looking around just tail wagging," she said.
Maharaj's dog, Milo, disappeared this summer for exactly 59 days.
"It was heartbreaking," she said. "It was stressful. It's like a different type of pain."
In August, WPTV shared the story about Milo running off from his home in Lake Worth Beach. At the time, Maharaj said a security guard at her subdivision told her he saw Milo walk out the gate. Little did she know Milo wound up with a woman miles away on the Treasure Coast.
After posting Milo's picture on websites for lost dogs, Maharaj called Katz, a private investigator for lost and stolen pets.
"I've been telling her this whole entire time we're going to get him back," she said.
Katz said the work consisted of going through the steps of eliminating or confirming tips.
"There's a lot of work in between," Katz said. "There's a lot of background checks. We had a lot of calls coming in, a lot of kids calling pretending to have her dog."
Last Sunday, Maharaj said she got a call from a woman saying she had Milo.
"She said her friend saw the thousands of signs that I posted of him all over West Palm (Beach) and took a photo of the sign and sent it to her through text message, and that's how she ended up calling me," she said.
So there's a happy ending to this story. Milo is back home where he belongs.
"This is an experience that I don't want any pet owner to ever go through," Maharaj said.
Katz said she has a 67% rating when it comes to returning a lost pet.