On March 6, three days after The Malibu Times ran my dog Chance’s photo, two boys named Chris were playing in a field near our home. They heard a dog whining and went to investigate. A golden retriever had fallen more than six feet through the plywood deck of a foundation of a yet-to-be-built house. The boys tried to pull up more of the deck to free the dog but were not able. They remembered seeing fliers about a missing golden and ran home to call.
When we received the call, we were excited. In the 25 days that Chance was missing, we had only one possible sighting and several collect calls from an “Anthony” who was in jail. My hopes sank a bit when I came near the place where the boys said the dog was “under the house”. Surely if Chance had gotten this close, he’d have come home. We left the outside lights on and the gate open every night since he disappeared, but when we saw the dog trying to claw his way up out of the cement block foundation, we were thrilled to see it was our golden retriever.
Chance is in pretty good shape, a bit dehydrated and matted, but sound. Obviously he has been eating somewhere. I’d like to thank anyone who has been so kind as to feed him as well as all the good people in Malibu who kept an eye out for him, but special thanks go to Chris Jude and his friend Chris who really saved our dog’s life. I believe that Chance was on his way home when he fell through the missing planks in the deck of that foundation. (Isn’t this a danger to children?) Two to three hundred feet more and he would have been home. Thank you Malibu Times for running his picture and all your good wishes.
Agnes Peterson