A rescue dog who went missing after her owner's car accident the day after Christmas is now back home, thanks to a caring Colorado community and the persistence of one particular local. Colorado Public Radio reports on the plight of Mia, a "shy and quiet" pup from Grand Junction who vanished on Dec. 26, after the Jeep that Charles Reigies was driving crashed and landed on its side in Gypsum after it hit some black ice. When Reigies came to, he found his girlfriend, Hanna Poscente, hurt with a broken neck, and Mia gone. The next day, Poscente, home from the hospital in a neck brace, set to work online, putting up notices about Mia in local forums.
"We had the entire Eagle County," Reigies says, per KKCO. "Everybody was out there putting food and water out." One woman, Janet Cross, was especially determined to find Mia, setting up a trail camera and animal control trap at the crash site, two hours from the couple's home. Cross said Mia was seen in the surveillance footage coming back to the site twice a day. "She's looking at the spot. She's looking for her family," Cross tells CPR. There was also a brief moment of hope when Mia actually ended up inside Cross' trap—but she escaped, either due to a trap malfunction or her own ingenuity, says Cross.
That's when things became more "dire," per CPR. Mia sightings suddenly stopped for more than a week. Then, Poscente got a call from a woman in Gypsum, 10 miles or so from the crash site. "I'm looking at your dog," the woman said. Poscente rushed to the scene, but there was no sign of Mia. She checked into a hotel and went back out the next morning, and as she walked along the train tracks, she saw exactly what she'd hoped for: Mia, on the side of the tracks in the shrubs and snow.
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"Hi, baby, hi!" Poscente exclaimed in a cellphone video she recorded as Mia casually ambled over, before leaping onto her in excitement. Mia did the same to a weepy Reigies when she was brought home. "She fought traffic and predators and snow and wind, and I mean, she made it," Cross says. Mia lost some weight during her ordeal, but "the vet says she's doing good, all things considered," Reigies notes. The couple is grateful to the Eagle County community for their help, especially Cross, whom they call their "guardian angel," per KKCO. "They were like their own little village looking for Mia, a dog they had never met before," Poscente says, per CPR. (More missing dog stories.)
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