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A couple of dog parents in Philadelphia were relieved recently when their missing dog returned home after having disappeared for 18 days. The pup had vanished from a local Wawa store while his parents were inside.
Gone Without a Trace
Matt and Natalie Berk stopped by a Wawa store on Aramingo and Wheatsheaf avenues in Philadelphia on Nov. 15 around 7:30 p.m. They left their two fur babies, Frankie and Theo, inside their car in the parking lot.
“We ordered sandwiches and we were coming out the door right here,” Matt Berk told NBC10. “Someone said there’s a beagle there and she ran out thinking it was Frankie, our beagle. I ran to the car around the corner here and saw the backdoor was open.”
Frankie was still safe inside the car, but 2-year-old Theo was gone.
“Ran to check and he just wasn’t there so we just started running around the area, seeing if we can find him, asking if people had seen him,” Matt Berk said. “No one had seen him.”
Surveillance video did not show anyone near the vehicle, and the couple were sure they locked the car, adding even more mystery to the strange ordeal.
“He typically wouldn’t get out of the car,” Matt Berk said of the Boxer-Golden mix. “I mean even me getting out of the car, you need to kind of pull him out. So unless he was startled or unless someone came and took him out.”
The couple contacted police and local animal shelters. They also set up a Facebook page and offered a $1,000 reward for Theo’s safe return, no questions asked.
Missing Dog Resurfaces
Security guards soon caught a glimpse of Theo at a water treatment facility. The Berks recruited the Southern NJ Humane Tracking and Trapping recovery group to help track the canine down to no avail.
“We didn’t know how he escaped the water facility but he did,” Natalie Berk said. “But it turned out he had been army crawling each night to try to get out to try to get food and he escaped into a nearby backyard.”
Traps and cameras were placed outside the home where Theo had been spotted. The Berks kept their eyes glued to a live feed to see if Maverick would reappear.
“We’re watching and our heart was just racing,” Natalie Berk said. “And when he finally went in I couldn’t even breathe. We raced over there as quickly as we could.”
After 18 agonizing days, Natalie Berk posted on Facebook that Theo was safe and back at home.
“He walked in. He jumped on the couch right in his spot,” Matt Berk said. “Put his head down. Let out a sigh. It kind of felt like he sighed of like, ‘It’s over. I’m home now.’”
The investigation into Theo’s disappearance continues, but it seems the only one who knows what happened is Theo himself – and he’s not talking.
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