K-9 Amber Alert group on Yahoo...

I just stumbled across this from a list I'm on. It's for lost dogs.
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/K9AmberAlert/?yguid=222997068

If you have ever lost a dog you love, you understand that panic goes into overdrive and the heartbreak that goes with it when it doesn't return. There is never closure.

Years ago, we moved from Acton, CA to a town maybe 20 miles away - Lancaster. The front door had trouble closing. We were there two days, and upon waking, the dogs were gone. Weimaraner Max (an adult), and puppy Fancy, a German Shorthair Pointer, had decided to leave this new home and return to Acton.

I posted Lost Dogs/Reward signs on the telephone poles and called Animal Control. I talked to neighbors. During the day, Animal Control saw the dogs running through the desert, heading back to Acton. Rattlesnakes, cactus, people who drew beads on stray dogs, traffic, no water and nothing to eat. We were sick.

They were gone over night. The morning of the second day, I heard something at the door.
Fancy had come home. Less than 6 months old, she showed up with sore feet and scratches, exhausted. How? Knowing the bond these two had, we were sure Max had met his end.

That night I received a phone call from someone on the next block. "Did your dog come back?
There's a big dog in the field behind my house. It could be yours." My son and I got into the station wagon, daring to think he had made it home. It was dark. We called him. Out of from the trees came Max! Tired, hungry, footsore and very thirsty, somehow he made his way back to the people who loved him, and Fancy. They never left again.

My little Bernie, a black and white Shih-tzu cross, ran the road defying people who tried to help him (including me), and traffic, for weeks. It is common in this area to leave dogs behind, or dump them when they become unwanted. On a cold March day, I set a live trap for him and baited it with Limberger cheese. In the morning I went back. He had spent a very cold and windy night, but he ate the cheese, and when I picked up the trap and put it in the back of my truck, he cried like a human baby. He's lying against my foot right now.

Anyway - you never know when you can help a dog back to its home. And this site may be
helpful to you.