On 16 Jan 2008, we went home quite late and we decided not to bring him back home from my in-laws place. We wanted to test how he responded staying out for 1 night. That night was a terrible night for my in-law cos Beckham refuse to sleep. He will walk in and out of the room and disturbing my in-law by requesting to get up to the bed, then jump down from the bed and then disturb again... haiz
The next morning, I received a phonecall from Joyce while at work saying that Beckham has left the house and gone missing. Apparently, he missed us too much that he squeeze through the gate at my in-law's place and went out looking for us. When he has been discovered missing from the house, he was nowhere to be found.
Joyce and I quickly rush home from work. We search high and low and confirmed that he is really missing. It was a terrible time for us and it seems quite unlikely that we can find him. We walked around the neighbourhood, going up and down a few blocks, driving around to see if we can spot him, but there was no sight of him anywhere.
We decided to make a police report, although it will not help much. Joyce was crying and I'm very depressed too. It's very unlikely that we'll never get to see Beckham again. He has only been with us for less than 4 months and I can't accept the fact that we lost him so soon. Though, it's just a few months, the bonding was so strong.
Bad things come to my mind... Could he have been hit by cars, could he be found by some worker and the cook him, etc. It's ok if someone found him and keep him as pet, but if he is dead, it's so depressing. When I drive, I keep looking to see if there's any dead dog on the road.
I prayed a lot that day and wonder if God can really answer prayers. There's nothing much we can do but to wait.
In the afternoon, we decided that we have to do something although the chance of finding him is low. We decided to make posters. It's may seems easy to make some poster, but we met quite a few obstacles. The reason being that my notebook was left in the office. I've got difficulty getting any picture of Beckham. Could not find cables or software drivers is not available in Joyce's notebook to get pictures from phone or digital camera. I can't remember all the obstacles that we faced. Time is not at our side cos the longer we delay, the slimmer the chance of finding Beckham. But somehow or rather, alternatives were available by chance and I managed to get a decent photo of Beckham which we took few days back.
Finally we've got the poster printed. However after printing a few pages, we ran out of ink :(
Anyway, we decided to just put up whatever we've printed out first. To decide where to put the poster is crucial cos it's not possible to reach out to all areas. We finally decided to put the posters at all the bus-stops nearby and the lift area for those blocks within the vicinity.
This is when I realized that there were many blocks at that area.
It takes us a very long time to put up the posters. It was almost evening time when we've finished the 1st batch of posters pasting.
Joyce is very tired due to crying and walking around to paste the posters.
As we ran out of ink, we went to shopping center to buy ink for the printer for next batch of printing at around 5+pm. At that time, I received a phone call from a school girl who claimed that she saw Beckham running towards around a coffee shop area around 2pm. She tried to catch him but he was difficult to catch. She expressed sympathy cos she lost her dog before. I was so grateful for the call and it gives us hope.
Knowing that there's some effect with the poster, we continued printing more posters and pasting it at the lift area. Time seems to pass very slowly and there's no more phone call until closed to 8pm. A lady called asking for more detail of Beckham and it seems like she saw him at a pet shop. This lady saw the poster and immediately went to the pet shop to check if there's any missing dog. She saw a dog who look familiar and gave us a call. She gave me the number for the pet shop and asked me to call the shop to check it out.
We were very happy as the chance seems very high. Immediately we call the pet shop and it sounds like we've found Beckham, so we quickly drive to the pet shop. True enough, Beckham was found :)
He looks pathetic... dirty, messy and locked up in a cage. We were very happy until we are at a loss of words. Thinking back, we should have taken a photo of him then.
He was found by a man. This man had a hard time trying to catch him. He cornered him until Beckham hit a car and then he managed to catch hold of Beckham. This man adopted a dog from that shop before (that dog was discarded by the owner due to some skin problem). These people who own pets understand how we felt. Therefore, he brought Beckham to the shop.
The shop was not very close to my in-laws place (though not too far) and we never knew this shop existed. Thanks to the poster and these good people, we finally found Beckham within 12 hours.
Through this incident, it shows that there are many good people around. At the same time, we saw some ugly incident. As we went around to remove all the posters that we pasted, we found some of the posters removed and crushed on to the floor.
Thank God that the timing is so nice. The shop owner intended to shave Beckham down the next day and probably sell or give him away.
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