FAIRMONT — A Florida couple who fled Hurricane Irma has postponed their return trip home to find their missing dog.
There is a $500 reward awaiting the person who can reunite Lady Girl, a 6-year-old Catahoula hound mix, with her family.
“We brought the whole family up here and we need to bring them home,” said Sarah Dial, owner of missing Lady Girl.
Dial and her family arrived at the Fairmont home of Dixie Jacobs, an aunt of Dial’s husband, on Sept. 9, after being stuck in evacuation traffic for more than 20 hours.
“The trip normally only takes us eight hours,” Dial said.
The Dial family was planning to return to their home in Bradenton, Florida, as soon as the electricity was turned on to start the cleanup effort. But all that has changed with Lady Girl still missing.
“The power was turned on yesterday,” Dial said Tuesday . “Our house is OK, the yard was totally flooded and some trees fell, but they didn’t fall on the house.”
“If I don’t find her by the end of the week I might stay for two weeks,” she said.
Lady Girl escaped from Jacobs’ house on Wire Grass Road in Fairmont at about 5 p.m. on Thursday. Dial and her husband, Tommy, were on the way to see their daughter, who is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, when they got the call that Lady Girl was missing. They immediately drove back to Fairmont and began a search.
“She doesn’t run away. She just hangs out in the yard,” Dial said. “Maybe she chased a rabbit and got lost.”
Dial said her family searched the woods behind the house and drove down N.C. 41 searching for Lady Girl but without any luck.
Dial’s sisters, Shauna Seliy, who lives in Chicago, and Jessica Priselac, who lives in Philadelphia, even enlisted in the effort. The sisters raised $500 in reward money, made fliers, and posted information about the missing dog on Facebook and Craigslist.
Dial has placed about 150 posters all over Fairmont in various business windows in hopes of finding Lady Girl.
“People have been so nice and helpful,” she said.
Lady Girl has a brown coat with white chest, a collar and an implanted microchip.
“If someone has her please bring her home,” Dial said. “I just want her back.”
Anyone with information is asked to call Sarah Dial at 412-327-2831 or email her at [email protected].
