#1 on my to do list, get new dog tag. Though I was curious what kind of ads I would get with this post. Fortunately Blitzen's not old enough to suffer from doggy UTI.

That's how we found uncle Raymond.

Steve, you mean that's how he found you?

Perhaps this family is onto a unique recycling idea.

You know, Maria they're making great progress in Haiti turning human feces into fertilizer.

Still, I'm not surprised that Simon has become timid and not very approachable. That is just TOO much dog love in my book.

"a British word for sweater."
You have that the wrong way round. Sweater is a foreign word for Jumper. (Not English = foreign)

J Lee, Umbrella. The funny thing about this story is that it's something that you expect to see on The Onion not the BBC website. But it's mid July, not April fools.

Unless, Tourniquet, you know of some kind national joke day I don't know about. And British, to me as a Canadian, does not equal "foreign." It's just common British usage, which is going to be foreign to most of the Americans reading this. No?

Truth oftentimes is way, WAY stranger than fiction. Who knows? Maybe the dog drinks out of the toilet? That might explain the notion that he'd pick up the scent, no?

I mean, there might be other plausible explanations, but I just do not want to go there.

Sometimes woof means no, you know?

Well we're staying clear of Bristol until they get their dog back!

Gwool, I don't want to get into too many theories, but the dog did disappear on July 4. Maybe he's trying to send the family a message?

And BTW, that grass behind Simon looks a little yellow. I suspect photoshop. BBC, J'Accuse!

Stellaa, that is an excellent point. Of course there's pee all over the city, and maybe I should take more a media analysis approach to this. The story isn't the pee, it's the middle class family being willing to announce that they're spreading their pee all over their community in search of their aging dog.

But there's something missing. How did the media find out about this. Did someone call them up, or is this a brilliant plan on behalf of the family to a)get some publicity for their pet or b)absolve themselves of liability for anything the pet may do?

But also. What's this story doing on the BBC (with its photoshopped pee background). Shouldn't this be in the Daily Mail, or some kind of tabloid. I just find the whole thing so weirdly amusing on so many levels.

I mean just try and imagine this on NPR. Or anywhere else.

people are strange eh

In a rarity, I am speechless.

Just when I think I've heard it all, something like this reminds me that there's no end to the depth of human oddity. I feel for the family, but urine? That's just nuts!

Bwahaha! Your Google ads are all about canine urinary incontinence.

Simon's family is clearly brilliant. By publicizing their plan to sprinkle their pee all over town and tipping off the media (surely that was part of the plan) the entire country, and even those far from Simon's possible wandering, are now aware that he is missing and will presumably be on the alert for the wayward Labrador. Absolute genius and much more effective than tacking "missing" signs to lamp posts.

As the owner of two Labradors, one of whom is notoriously fond of going on "walkabout" I sincerely hope that Simon is reunited with his family.

The family that pees together ..... I have no rhyme for the first time since orange

Ablonde, brilliant or not, I hope they find him.

Karin. TOO funny. But I wouldn't put it past them, what with the pack of corgis. Her affection for them is legendary.

Tom, it works better in French. There's a saying in Quebec "Une famille qui cri est une famille uni." (Loud families are united families.) Just substitute pee for cri. Or we could get Zen: Families that pee together, be together.

Canadian loon, Juliet Waters.
or,
American:`Jocelyn Testes - Harder.
American:`No quote a:` Wild Peach.
-
Why? Elinor Wylie wrote:`Wild Peach.

When the world turns completely upside down
You say you we'll immigrate to the Eastern Shore
Abroad a river-boat from Baltimore;
We'll wear a coonskin cap, and I a gown
Homespun, dyed butternut's dark gold color.
Lost, like your lotus eating ancestor,
We'll swim in milk and honey till we drown.
`
The winter will be short, the summer long,
The autumn amber-hued, sunny and hot,
Tasting of ciders and scuppernong;
All seasons sweet, but autumn best of all. - E.W.

Jocelyn Testes Harder gets testy if Ya quote poets.
I bet this. Guess what?
She said her wed vows?
She loved Flower Child!
Flower child hippies. Chow.
Bagels, Pa Pa in bib overalls.
The Bibs with blue suspenders.
U- reckon? Ya Canadians behave.
If Ya teach? No giggle off in a sky!
If you must say:`Uranus? heehaw!

Thanks Arthur. There are some lovely lines in there, but no rhyme for pee?

Potpourri?

(Great story!)

Yes, it does sound crazy, but when you’ve lost your dog, you’ll try anything.

Our dog was lost, too—for six days no less; three of which we had no idea he was missing as our former friend, who was watching him while we were states away dealing with the death of a dear friend, put her own ego above his safety and didn’t want us to know. It was short notice and the vets and pet resorts were full up; we thought she loved animals the same way we did: we were wrong. I’ll never be able to forgive myself for leaving him with her: never.

After she finally confessed, we made it home the next day, brokenhearted and desperate to find him. Like the dog in this story, our dog was very shy. The first six and a half years of his life he had been tied outside year round to a shed behind a shed where he saw no one and was beaten routinely. Consequently, he didn’t bark, cringed away from any hand that came near him, and wouldn’t come when called. (If someone beat you every time they told you to “come here” would you? Me neither.)

Anyway, the outpouring of support from neighbors, friends—even our apartment building management—was astounding. We called everyone we knew during the ten-hour drive home and were met by a large group of friends who were ready to search. We pitched a tent for ourselves on the grounds and searchers were armed with mobile phones so they could call us if they spotted him while scouring the acres and acres of wooded area bordering a busy roadway (they couldn’t call him or he would run, possibly through the woods and into the roadway). There had been reported sightings of him streaking through the underbrush the first few days, but by day four (our arrival) no sightings were being reported. It was agony. We posted fliers all over the area, called the Game Commission repeatedly (very nice people—very understanding), and walked, walked, walked looking for him. Day five came and went with more of the same.

On day six, while I was sobbing away while papering another neighborhood, my partner was at our local pet store and the owner (a wonderful woman who has known us for many years and taught us much about animals), came on my partner weeping in the parking lot and after hearing about everything we had already tried asked her, “But, did you pee?” Yes, my partner thought it was crazy, too, but she told her how she had lost one of her own dogs while hiking, and had (oh, I hate writing this word) peed in the last place she had seen him, and after searching for him a few hours, went back to the area and there he was. (Yes, I know how this sounds, I really do.)

So, we tried it. That night while we were using a spot light to search for him in the nearby fields and meadows (locating only a disturbingly large number of pairs of eyes at different levels), we, uh, sprinkled some, um, essence from a container up and down the lane on the way to our tent. We parked the car nearby and left the back doors open and tried to get some sleep, by now firmly convinced that he was dead. Well, middle-aged bladders being what they are, we were awakened by the need to, um, oh, you know what I mean. My non-camping partner, unaccustomed to such primitive accommodations, peed (I’m sorry, I really am) on her sock and grumbled her way over to our car to get another. Suddenly, her grumbling gave way to sobbing and her voice was quavering as she asked me to “come here, come here”! Fearing the worst, as I had been smelling decomposition in the nearby field all day, but had been unable to locate the remains and unwilling to say anything to her, I braced myself and stumbled towards her with a heavy heart. And there they were in the back seat of our car; my partner was holding our shivering, shaking, frightened dog.

Laugh if you will; tell me he could have located us by other smells: our car, us, the tent, whatever, but we didn’t get our boy back until we sprinkled the pee and we had been camped there for two days already. Me, I don’t know if it really works or not, but I’ll tell you, our visually impaired, deaf-in-one ear dog found us and all he’s ever really had to rely on is his nose.

I hope those folks find their dog; my little guy, four years older now, is curled up beside me while I’m writing this and not a day goes by that we don’t look at him and know how much he’s changed our lives for the better.

Totle...I'm almost in tears reading your comment. And feeling very sheepish. I probably should not be making that much fun of them. Truth is, if my dog were missing, I would probably do the same (as I hinted at in my first paragraph, I think. Hope you don't mind, but I'm going to to call attention to your comment in my post.

Anything we can do to help people find their lost dogs, we should.

Juliet,

Oh, we well understand; we thought it was crazy, too, and when a local dog trainer here was told about it after the fact, we were told he said, “no way,” but I just don’t know. Dogs seem to know each other by the smell of their urine. Our boy routinely visits and marks the areas of his neighborhood buds, so it seems reasonable to extrapolate this thought process to his people, too, but who can say? Desperate times, you know? Our pet store friend told us to think about it as a way to deliver the strongest concentration of our scent, stronger than the scent our clothes could hold, but again, who knows? Not me. All I know is that we got a second chance with our boy we never thought we would have. At that time, as racked with grief as we were, if someone had told us to shave our heads and sprinkle our hair around as we walked on our hands we would have done it.

The day after we got him back, as we were walking up the hill in our apartment complex, a neighbor, who we had never met, driving out of the complex in his SUV, spied our boy walking on his extension leash, but he didn’t see us following a wee bit behind him. He slammed on his brakes, leapt out of his car and ran towards our dog. Seeing us, he stopped short and just kept saying over and over again how happy he was we had found him. There are some darn fine people in this world.

Well I very much hope the Brits find their dog, and I'm very glad that Totle and partner found theirs! Our dog spends plenty of time nosing about in the laundry pile, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if he could ID us by pee smell...just hope it never comes to that!