Strangers’ kindness saves Teddy the dog

It took a village and $10,000 that Melissa Feijoo didn’t have to bring her pet dog Teddy home.

Teddy home with his owner, Melissa Feijoo, on Friday after escaping a Brisbane vet and being found by good Samaritans. Picture: Glenn Hunt

It took a village and $10,000 that Melissa Feijoo didn’t have to bring Teddy home. But this is more than the story of a young woman’s raw determination to find her lost dog – it’s how a community of perfect strangers dropped everything to reunite them.

Ms Feijoo’s distress after nine-year-old Teddy went missing from a veterinarian clinic in northside Brisbane on Wednesday cut through the impersonal commotion of big-city life, pulling people into the search from far and wide. Fearing the purebred chow chow would be kept by whoever found him or, worse, sold on, she borrowed from her parents and emptied her bank account to offer a reward of $10,000 for his return.

“I’m single, I don’t have children … so he’s like my child,” she said. “I just thought if somebody had picked him up and didn’t want to give him back, what would make them return him? Money.”

Ms Feijoo, 36, posted across Facebook on dog lovers’ pages in every community group she could think of. She scoured street after street with her sister and a housemate; she combed car yards after hours and put up flyers. She told herself she would never give up.

And a magical thing happened: the help she needed began to arrive. People she didn’t know joined the ground search in Eagle Farm, a busy commercial area. Others shared Teddy’s photo and her contact details online. The clicks piled up as word continued to spread. Local council workers and police promised to keep a lookout.

Following the drama at his nearby business, Rod Graydon gave up his lunch hour on Thursday to drive through the neighbourhood. The former policeman, 61, could relate to Ms Feijoo’s plight. He has two shar peis and runs a rescue service for the breed, a cousin of the chow chow. “I’m a dog person, too. I get what she was going through,” he said.

Back at his desk, he emailed his workmates about Teddy: would they keep their eyes peeled on the way home? Half an hour later, a female colleague burst into his office: “I’ve just seen that missing dog,” she said. “He’s in the creek.”

Mr Graydon phoned Ms Feijoo. “Is he alive?” she asked. Her other fear was that Teddy would be hit by a truck. It turned out he had strayed barely 100m from the Brisbane Pet Surgery on Theodore St where he was having his teeth cleaned under anaesthetic. His relieved owner rushed to the scene.

Teddy, though, is skittish with people he doesn’t know and had disappeared into mangroves by the time Ms Feijoo arrived. She waded into thigh-deep mud. Teddy still had the IV cannula in his front leg. He was dehydrated, lapping down two bowls of water, but otherwise none the worse.

Ms Feijoo said words couldn’t express her gratitude to Mr Graydon and all those who responded to her pleas. “I’m a one-person band,” she told The Weekend Australian. “Apart from my sister and flatmate I was basically on my own until all of these kind people stepped in. Without them, I would have had no hope of finding him.”

What she would like now are some answers from the vet’s clinic, which, adding insult to injury, charged her $1884 when she went to pick up Teddy and her second dog, Minky, before breaking the bad news Teddy was missing.

A veterinarian nurse said he had slipped his collar when taken out for a toilet break; someone else insisted he escaped while his cage was being cleaned, Ms Feijoo said.

Clinic founder and surgeon Scot Plumber was not available on Friday; a staff member said he could not discuss the situation due to client confidentiality.

Ms Feijoo said she was prepared to stump up the reward for Mr Graydon; the good news for her is he declined it. “I actually didn’t know about the money but it wouldn’t have made any difference because it was always a matter of getting the dog back,” he said. “I’m glad she did.”