Service dog missing 3 years reunited with owners

WHEATON, Ill. — A service dog missing three years after escaping from a fenced yard in suburban Chicago during a vacation from Michigan was reunited with its owners last week.

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Debra and Steve Mejeurs, of Kalamazoo, were visiting friends in the Elk Grove suburb of Chicago in 2017, when Lola, a black Labrador retriever trained as an epilepsy service dog, vanished from a fenced yard.

The couple returned every weekend for almost two months hoping to find Lola, MLive reported. They even hired a pet detective to help in the search. But they could not find her.

“It was just devastating,” she said. “I hated leaving Elk Grove because it just felt like I was abandoning her and leaving her behind.”

Then last week, DuPage County Animal Control got a call from a couple who had been feeding a dog that lived in a forest preserve for the last year. They eventually earned the dog’s trust, and Thursday, they were able to get a leash on her. The dog was microchipped and turned out to be Lola. She was found about 12 miles from where she went missing, MLive reported. It is unclear how she survived in the wild that long.

The Mejeurs got a call that same day that Lola was found.

“I still had an ounce of hope, I guess, but the majority of me was thinking she had already crossed the rainbow bridge,” Debra Mejeurs said. “I was just completely stunned.”

The reunion was Saturday. Lola started wagging her tail when she smelled her old blanket. She burrowed her head into Debra Mejeurs before bounding over to Steve, knocking him to the ground in excitement.

“If she could talk,” Debra Mejeur said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Cox Media Group