After her dog went missing, Washington native Carole King quit her job so that she could spend 57 days looking for the beloved pet.
The incident took place when Carole and her husband Verne were enjoying a short getaway at a hotel in Montana. While there, after being spooked by storms, their border collie Katie, pictured below, ran away. What happened next is Hollywood-movie worthy.
It's an unfortunate reality of life that when a pet goes missing, more often than not, the odds of their safe return are not stacked in their owner's favor. Despite this, Katie's owners vowed to do anything and everything they could to bring her home safely.
They were also in the perfect position to find the seven-year-old collie as former law enforcement officers.
According to The New York Times, the night Katie went missing, Carole and Verne searched until 4 am for their pooch, scouring the area and its surrounding neighborhoods as much as they could under the cover of darkness.
Their next action was to hand out a whopping 500 flyers to let everyone know that Katie was missing. They spread the word on social media too.
However, sometimes it's missing people who're found by dogs:The couple also adopted more innovative methods in the hope of finding Katie including game cameras and animal traps filled with her favorite snacks.
Aware of how important scent is for dogs, Carole even jogged around the areas where Katie might have been in the hope that she'd simply smell her way back to her.
Then, when she was told she couldn't take time off work to search for her dog, Carole simply quit her job.
She told the New York Times: "Katie was just more important to me, I just said, 'I'll finish this week, and that's it.'"
Strangers who heard about Katie's plight through social media also got in on the action and gave up their time to help search for the dog.
Then, 57 days after she went missing, her owners' dedication to the search finally paid off when she was found in a small town in another state. The devoted owners had been contacted by people who'd seen a dog matching Katie's description after being given flyers the previous day.
In an interview with The Spokesman-Review, Carole explained that despite Katie being severely dehydrated and losing 12 lbs, she recognized her instantly: "I just bear-hugged her; I wasn’t going to let her go.
"Tears were flying, we were screaming, everybody is high-fiving, hugging each other. People are stopping in their vehicles, getting out and hugging us. I think the whole neighborhood knew that we found her."
