Leo the Border Collie reunited with family 9 months after being lost in the wilds of Souther Oregon

[depakid]

Leo the Border Collie poses with friends and family this morning. From left are Nanette Martin, who first spotted Leo; Marisa Davis (holding Leo) and Jason McNichols, Leos owners; and the two Bugs Inc. workers who caught Leo: Ricky Downes and David Mays.
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Nine months and $2,000 after he disappeared in the wilds of southern Oregon, Leo the Border Collie is heading home to Northeast Portland.

He may appear a bit wolflike now, shaggy and a wild look in the eye. But he was a well-groomed 2-year-old herding dog last Fourth of July weekend, when Jason McNichols , 30, and fiance Marisa Davis , 29, left him with friends while they rafted for an hour on the Rogue River in southern Oregon.

Agility-course trained and keen at playing Frisbee, Leo had never before given the couple a reason to worry. But on that summer afternoon, he suddenly bolted when a friend pulled up to the Graves Creek boat landing to await McNichols and Davis.

"We were heartbroken," said McNichols. The pair posted lost-dog fliers in Galice, the closest hamlet, six miles upriver, and in other towns to the north, where they were camped. Given Leo's distinctive brown, white and black coloring, they figured it wouldn't be long before someone spotted the 50-pound pup. But despite days spent hiking the area during her summer break from teaching at a Beaverton middle school, Davis couldn't find Leo.

So McNichols hired Longview, Wash., tracker Harry Oakes, whose corpse-sniffing dog tipped off investigators seven years ago to the buried remains of two murdered girls in the yard of convicted killer Ward Weaver. The search dog pointed out one of Leo's trails, McNichols said, suggesting that the dog had at least survived a week on his own. But after no more news for the next eight months, there came Nanette Martin's phone call in early April.

On a break during a motorcycle ride through Galice, Martin spotted one of the Leo fliers. She recognized him at once as a stray that appeared now and then on her property 25 miles south of Galice in Wilderville. "And when I saw the sign and I thought, 'oh my God, that's that lost dog,'" Martin said.

Turns out, Wilderville residents had been seeing the border collie with a patterned collar darting around town since November. Skittish around humans, he wandered through the woods, pilfering cat food.

More: http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/04/leo_the_wandering_border_colli.html