I’m so glad you got your dog back! Our kitty went missing last fall, but returned home less than two days later.
I’m appalled that your local vets and shelters don’t have or don’t use the microchip scanner! I worked at a vet clinic for two years, and that was our first procedure when someone brought in a stray.
That made me cry. I’m such a sap for lost animals. A couple of years ago when I was home in NW Indiana visiting my family for Christmas, a lost kitty turned up on our kitchen windowsill and just sat there for hours. It was clearly a house cat that had gotten out but had no collar or anything. Now, I’m deathly allergic to cats (the whole asthma/emergency room route) but I insisted we bring the cat inside that night (it was below zero). I didn’t want to take it to a pound because there’re no no-kill shelters in my area. After calling the local pound and surrounding town pounds the next day to see if someone had reported it missing, I called the Humane Society branch several towns over. They had a report of a similar missing cat so I called the owner and it turned out they lived in the exact same house number as my parents only 4 streets over. The cat had run out when they were putting up the Christmas tree and I guess got disoriented and thought our house was his. The little girl burst into tears when she saw her kitty and said she didn’t care if Santa didn’t come now as long as she had Sammy back. It was a great Christmas warm fuzzy! <end hijack>