When “Lost” Dogs Fall (and can’t get up)

The Importance of Searching Close to Your Home.

Here’s an amazing lost dog recovery story that involved determined pet parents who never gave up, who chased every lead, and found their two lost dogs just in the nick of time. This story, logo, and photos come from our friends at Lost Dogs of Wisconsin and are shared with their permission.

FROM LOST DOGS OF WISCONSIN:

We wanted to share this happy story and photos we received from Tito and Jelly Bean’s owners (Lafayette County) about where and how they found them last night.

Tito and Jelly Bean went missing on October 24, 2025. Last night, they [the owners] received a call of a possible sighting so they went to check it out. It was a false lead, but as they drove back into their driveway, Eric heard a howl. It sounded a bit like Tito but he wasn’t sure. They turned back around to investigate, driving slowly to see if they heard anything else.

Right at the entrance to their neighbor’s field, they head a loud bark. They got out of the car and looked around with a flashlight, but saw nothing.

Then Sarah saw the grass move. She ran over and saw Tito’s nose poking out from the grass! They quickly cleared out the grass and discovered a buried culvert that was smashed in. Tito could only get his head out of the metal culvert—the rest of his body was stuck. He was trapped and could not get loose!

Tito trapped in the culvert, struggling to get out.

Eric ran and got a shovel from a nearby farmhouse, returned, and started to dig. Tito was able to move back a bit and then they were able to shovel out the dirt that had entrapped him so that he was able to scoot through.

Jelly Bean was trapped behind where Tito was, so it took more digging, but they got him free also. Both dogs were dehydrated and hungry, but ultimately made a full recovery.

Here’s the culvert that both Tito and Jelly Bean were trapped in.

This story brought to mind several lost dog cases that I’ve worked on where dog owners believed their dog “ran away” but actually, the dog was trapped nearby. In one case, an English bulldog was assumed to be stolen when in fact he had dug out of the yard, entered a neighbor’s backyard, fell into their pool, and drowned. In another case, a dog was trapped inside an owner’s gazebo for five days and never whined or barked, but was found and lived. A former coworker of mine had their Dachshund disappear. They were not able to find him until two years later, when they flushed out a culvert pipe and the bones of their dear dog flushed out. They had walked by that culvert pipe routinely (it was right next to their mailbox), calling for their dog…but their dog never barked.

In yet another case, a golden retriever went missing in Texas. On the same day he vanished, the owner’s cable TV went out. The owner hired a tracking dog and handler. While the handler and the dog’s owner were standing on the front deck, the cable TV worker, who had crawled under the house to fix the cable problem, yelled out, “Hey, there’s a dog under here!” That golden retriever had become entangled in the cable wires under the house. He was lying directly under the porch where the owner and tracker were standing! He was right there, but he never made a sound.

We should never forget that even when a family believes that their dog “ran away” from home (or “was stolen”)—especially if the dog’s escape was not witnessed—the family (or the lost pet rescuer) needs to conduct a slow, methodical search of the family’s property, as well as the neighborhood, for potential places where the dog could have become trapped and is unable to come home.

If you have a story of a dog that was “missing” but not really missing, please share the details in the comments below. We can all learn from cases like this one.