A family dog ran away, frightened by fireworks on the Fourth of July in Boynton Beach. Now the Cote’s are desperate to find Holly, a five-year-old, five pound Chihuahua. Holly was not wearing a collar.
“This is what she looks like,” 10-year-old Mikey Cote said, holding up a ‘missing’ sign, during an interview.
Holly’s escape was captured on their home surveillance system.
Off camera, Mikey and his dad, Josh, are lighting fireworks. You hear a boom and a few seconds later, Holly runs across the driveway and she’s gone, terrified.
“Now that I see it, this is a problem,” said Lucy Cote, Mikey’s mom, and Josh’s husband. “They always say keep your dogs inside. To me, it was one of those things where I never even bothered. But knowing now how I feel that my little dog was so scared seeing that. It’s a problem.”
“It’s a frantic week, even for me,” said Jamie Katz, a pet detective. “I find lost pets. It’s what I do.”
The Cote’s called her for help. One of the many who has recently.
“I still have about six callbacks to make since yesterday,” she said. “Keep them safe. This is our holiday, not theirs.”
Jamie and her dogs tracked Holly’s scent.
“Once we have a direction of travel, we see how far the scent goes in each direction so we can blow up the sign campaign. It’s the sign campaign that gets us the information,” she points out.
They set up signs in a mile or so radius around where they believe Holly escaped to.
“We say ‘Holly wanna cookie?’ and she should run really fast up the stairs. I guess she went really far out and couldn’t hear us,” Mikey recalled.
Guess who came home about an hour after we left?
“Mike, come here. You and Payton (Mikey’s 9-year-old sister),” Josh said, holding Holly.
Someone saw the signs. It worked. Holly got her cookie. She was returned home, safe and sound.
“If you hear fireworks, keep your dogs inside and safe,” Mikey reminds us.
They’re also going to make sure Holly has a collar on all her time moving forward.
