Valerie the sausage dog believed to be alive after being on the run for over a year on Kangaroo Island

It sounds unbelievable, but Valerie the miniature dachshund has been on the run since she made a dash from a KI campsite more than a year ago. Can you help snag this sausage dog?

A search is under way on Kangaroo Island for a four-legged “escapee” who has been missing for almost 500 days.

Albury couple Georgia Gardner and Josh Fishlock were enjoying a relaxing holiday with their miniature sausage dog, Valerie, when she vanished.

The pair had left Valerie in a pen at their campsite for 30 minutes to go fishing on November 13, 2023, when the tiny pup managed to escape her enclosure.

While some good Samaritans tried to catch her, Valerie, who weighs less than 4kg, was spooked and fled into the bushland.

Ms Gardner, 24, remembered being “bewildered” and in denial when she realised Valerie was gone.

“I was like ‘No, she’s so close to me that if she’s run off down the road, she’s going to come back, she’s OK’,” Ms Gardner said.

“As a little bit more time passed, I was like ‘No, she’s actually missing, she’s gone, we might not get her back’.”

The couple took their beloved pet on a holiday to KI. Picture: Supplied

She escaped from their campsite and has only been seen briefly since. Picture: Supplied

The couple’s getaway plans were quickly scrapped as they spent the next week scouring farmland near Stokes Bay.

“We had only packed summer clothes and it poured with rain while we were walking through this property,” Ms Gardner said.

“I remember on the first day I was just covered in tears. We barely ate anything.”

Eventually, the devastated couple had to leave the island and return to their then-home in Broken Hill.

“My whole world just crumbled,” Ms Gardner said.

“When we left the island without her, I cried for days.”

Fortunately, the Kangaroo Island community and Kangala Wildlife Rescue rallied around the pair, who have since moved to Albury, NSW.

Leading the charge is one of the directors, Jared Karran, who said they were closing in on the area where Valerie had repeatedly been seen.

“We’re actively out there trying to find her,” he said.

Mr Karran said he was amazed Valerie had survived so long but was probably doing so on a diet of roadkill and dam water.

Valerie the missing sausage dog on KI. Picture: Supplied

Valerie the sausage dog is still missing on KI, leaving owners Georgia Gardner and Josh Fishlock devastated. Picture: Supplied

The techniques employed to lure her had been adapted to suit a dog of her size but he said he would be getting advice from interstate counterparts on the next best steps.

“We’ve got dog traps and cat traps but the problem is they’ll catch possums, goannas and feral cats,” Mr Karran said.

The not-for-profit organisation has set up “surveillance” and is using “various trapping and luring methods” to help bring Valerie home.

While there were a few reported sightings of the dachshund soon after she disappeared, Ms Gardner said that she and Josh were being careful “not to get our hopes up”.

But when more reports, videos and photos of a dachshund with a pink collar started coming in a year after Valerie vanished, the couple’s spirits were lifted.

Soon after the anniversary of her disappearance, she was seen about 15km from Stokes Bay. Earlier this week, the couple received more photographic evidence that Valerie was alive.

“We’ve never really ruled out that it wasn’t possible that she wasn’t alive,” Ms Gardner.

“(We were in) such a mix of emotions.”

A recent photo of Valerie the missing sausage dog snapped on KI. Picture: Supplied

“When they (Kangala Wildlife Rescue) sent it through, I was standing there with Josh and we both started crying,” Ms Gardner said.

“That kind of took away a lot of the doubt.

“She would barely go an hour without me let alone out in the wilderness living off who knows what, in a weird little cave or something.”

The pair are in complete disbelief that their “princess” has managed to survive for more than 16 months in the wild – but said it would “mean everything” to be reunited with her.

“It would just mean that our little family is finally complete,” Ms Gardner said.

“We would just be so thankful to all of the Kangaroo Island people, because we were tourists on their island and everyone there was so lovely to us.”

Kangala Wildlife Rescue shared Valerie’s unbelievable story to Facebook on Saturday, asking the public report any sightings to help reunite the little sausage dog with her desperate owners.

Originally published as Valerie the sausage dog believed to be alive after being on the run for over a year on Kangaroo Island