A Sydney woman who launched a major Facebook campaign to find her missing dog feared she may never see him again, after a stranger informed her the people who found him had fallen in love with him.
Nathalie Garcia, 33, and her husband Shaun Beattie, 42, returned home from work on January 27 to find their 10-year-old Staffordshire terrier Nacho was gone.
"I cried myself to sleep," Ms Garcia told ninemsn, after the couple searched their inner-west suburb of Sydenham and beyond but were unable to find their pet.
Ms Garcia, who is seven months pregnant, launched a Facebook campaign to find Nacho, and spent the next week searching frantically with the help of family, friends and more than 600 people who joined her cause online.
She plastered the area with 20,000 missing flyers, spoke to two pet detectives and chased numerous leads from people calling with tips and sightings.
"There were just posters everywhere, I had people coming up to me in the street going, 'I hope you find your dog, it's so sad'," she said.
Ms Garcia said she was exhausted by the search when a man named Gregof called her on February 8 and said he had seen Nacho at the Post Café in Marrickville.
Gregof, who did not want his surname published, told ninemsn he was having coffee with friends Tony and Manuel in Marrickville, a suburb next to Sydenham, when they spotted Nacho.
They gave Nacho some hamburger meat and sat with him before Tony decided to take him home.
"By that time he was our best mate … [Tony] thought he might make a good mate for him and his other dog," Gregof said.
They also feared he would be put down if they took him to the pound, he said.
Gregof told Ms Garcia his friends had fallen in love with her dog, but would be happy to return him to her.
He wanted to help Ms Garcia and her husband reunite with Nacho, but was unable to get hold of either of his friends.
He couldn't remember where Tony lived and Manuel wasn't answering his phone.
Ms Garcia and her husband spent an evening driving around with Gregof searching for Tony’s house.
"We ended up driving around Epping for three hours trying to find this guy's house … but we didn't end up finding him, I felt like the life had been drained out of me, it was so full on," Ms Garcia said.
Two days later, Gregof finally managed to contact his friends and they arranged to meet the couple at the Post Café in Marrickville last Friday, 13 days after Nacho first went missing.
Ms Garcia said she was overjoyed when she saw Nacho waiting in backseat of Tony's car.
"He fully power-licked my face and hugged me," she said.
"I've had this dog for 10 years and he's more a part of my life than anything — it's been the worst two weeks of my life."
Gregof said his friends were sad to see Nacho go but wanted to do the right thing and were glad he was with his owners.
"We love the dog to bits — he's gorgeous, he's absolutely gorgeous, he's a mad pup," he said.
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