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 | WESTIE FACTS WESTIE IS SHORT FOR WEST HIGHLAND WHITE TERRIER ALL WESTIES ARE WHITE AND LOOK VERY SIMILAR AN AVERAGE ADULT WESTIE WEIGHS BETWEEN 15 AND 21 POUNDS ALL ADULT WESTIES EARS STAND STRAIGHT UP. THEY CAN LAY THEM BACK WHEN FRIGHTENED OR PLAYFUL BUT THEY CAN'T HANG TO THE SIDE OR THE FRONT OF THEIR HEADS. WESTIES HAVE A CARROT SHAPED TAIL THAT STANDS UP MOST OF THE TIME. MANY WESTIES ARE HOUSE DOGS, BUT DON'T LET THIS FOOL YOU. THEY ARE TERRIERS TO THE BONE. THEY LOVE TO RUN AND PLAY HARD. MOST OF THEM LOVE TO CHASE SMALL VERMIN SUCH AS MICE OR SQUIRRELS. |
 | On Easter Morning 2002, we gave our daughter a Westie for her the birthday. They adored each other immediately and it grew from there. Ginny and Sweetie have a bond that cannot be broken. On August 23, 2006 Sweetie left our deck through a gate with a broken latch. She has never been lost before. Within 30 minutes our son realized she was missing. We all rushed home and within an hour launched a full scale search. We live in a quiet subdivision in Brentwood, TN which is a suburb of Nashville. We walked and drove calling her all evening. Around midnight we decided a kind hearted family had her in their garage for the night and would look for her owners the next morning. By 7 a.m. the next morning we had signs on every stop sign in our area. We searched all day and handed out flyers with her photo on them to every home in several subdivisions. We searched wooded areas, checked small creeks and ditches. We called every vet in the area hoping someone had turned her in to them. We notified all Animal Control agencies and Humane Societies in our area. No one had seen Sweetie. Not one person. We searched the second day until 2 a.m. By this time we were frantic. We went door to door. We made large neon laminated posters with her photo and info and put them on every sign we could find. We put a flier on every mailbox within a two mile radius. We hung them in every store, gas station and business that would allow us to. By the third day we were sick with worry and couldn't sleep or eat. We realized she was not in our immediate area. We branched out to a five mile radius. Each day we grew more frightened than the day before. Ginny was inconsolable. We continued to search day and night. By this time we had many fears. Occasionally in this area, we have coyotes come down from the heavily wooded hills. Several years ago they killed small pets in their own yards. Each day grew longer than the day before. We were either driving and looking for her, handing out fliers or making more signs at fast as we could. Strangers as well as friends helped look for her. We received around 100 calls a day the first three weeks. False sightings, other found dogs, tips--but mainly people wanted to help. When they saw her photo, it made it personal for them. She wasn't a lost, faceless dog. She was the face you see to the left of this column. Tender hearted children called us wanting to know if Sweetie was home yet. They called to tell us they were praying for Sweetie. Some called crying and promised to keep her photo on their frig until we found her. Our community banded together to find Sweetie. Not one person ever saw her. Not one single clue. We continued to spend each day making signs, handing out fliers, driving and calling her name all night. We were numb by then. We all felt as if we were in a dream. It was unbelievable that Sweetie was gone. Not Sweetie, who hardly ever even goes into the yard, let alone off into who knows where. We set wire cage raccoon traps in the wooded hills. We placed an article of clothing we had worn that day in them, hoping that if she were lost, the scent would draw her in and the door would close. We checked them each morning at 6 a.m. It took several hours each morning and each evening. We heard about a cave a few miles from us in one of the hillsides. We contacted a spelunker to go into the cave and see if she might be hurt and unable to get out. Because of the large reward, the local FOX channel did a news story on her. There were two articles in the newspaper as well as the lost and found section. We put a large ad in the Spanish newspaper and handed out Spanish fliers. We mailed letters and fliers to every vet, groomer, kennel and pet supply store we could find an address for within a 25 mile radius of our home. We mailed packets to more Humane Societies and dog pounds than we had time to count. We relentlessly continued to search for her any way we could think of. |
 | This search continued for several weeks. We had tried to find some type of tracking dog to search for her. We contacted police departments and hunting dog clubs in several states. They pretty much all told us the same thing. Rescue dogs are trained to ignore animal scents and focus on human scents. We needed a dog to do the exact opposite. While searching the internet, we came across a woman that had trained a blood hound to track lost pets. We called her in North Carolina and got on her waiting list. At this point we just desperately wanted anything to grasp onto. We realized this search dog was not going to go into the woods or someones yard and come out with Sweetie. I think deep down the coyote scenario was in the back of all our minds. We needed a direction to go in. The day Sophie the blood hound and her handler Millie Sharpe came we were skeptical. She had told us how to prepare scent articles for the dog. We would not have believed it if we had not seen it with our own eyes. The dog tracked Sweetie off our deck, down our driveway,down the street two houses and then from one back door to the next. She then went around a house with dogs in a fence several times, through several backyards and then to another back door. Sweetie never goes out our front door. We believe she was going to back doors trying to find ours. She walked down a driveway on the next street over into that street. The scent stopped in the middle of that street. The handler told us that if someone or another animal had physically picked her up, the blood hound would have continued to track her only with its nose in the air and not on the ground. The blood hound sat down in the middle of the quiet neighborhood street signaling to her handler this is where the scent ends. The handler took her back to our house, let her smell the scent articles again and the dog tracked the exact same route the second time. Ms. Sharpe told us that her professional opinion without a doubt is that a car stopped and Sweetie got into a door on the driver's side. Because the scent ended in the middle of the street, the car could have been going in either direction. As I mentioned before , we were very skeptical. After being with Ms. Sharpe for several hours and watching the professionalism with which she and her dog worked, we have no doubt this information is correct. We do not believe Sweetie was hit on that street because we drove it and walked it 100 times the evening she went missing. There was no sign of an animal being hit. This all occurred around 4:30 to 5 p.m and we believe someone coming home from work would have noticed if a dog had been hit around that time. We were giddy with relief to know she was not lost and hurt in the woods or taken by a coyote. We thought we just needed more publicity to find the person that picked her up. |
| We continued to search. We mailed letters to Animal Shelters and Humane Associations across our state and into the surrounding ones. We contacted Westie Rescue USA. We had listed Sweetie on all the internet missing pet sites the first week. We searched them daily for found Westies. We mailed letters to vets across the state asking them to be on the look out for a new client with an adult female Westie. Sweetie was not spayed. Because she was an indoor dog, we mistakenly never saw the need to alter her. For the same reason, we never had her micro chipped. One of our biggest fears is that Sweetie was stolen and sold to a breeding kennel. Hopefully an unsuspecting family has her and are treating her with the love and kindness she deserves. The bottom line is we need the publics help to find Sweetie. She is out there somewhere. She could be anywhere in the country by now. She may have been stolen and sold. We didn't realize until Sweetie was taken, that dogs are sold and shipped by air or ground constantly. Someone has her and doesn't realize she belongs to us or they have her and don't care that she is someone else's dog. Please be on the look out for a neighbor, friend or even a stranger that has gotten an adult female Westie between August 23 and now. If you have a pet, ask your vet if they have a new adult female Westie as a patient. If someone has her and knows she belongs to someone else, they will more than likely lie about where they got the dog. Please follow your gut instinct. If you think there is even a slim chance she might be Sweetie, please follow up. After you have some information, please come to this site and contact us. We can not thank you enough for taking the time to read our story. We want and need her back so much. Sweetie is irreplaceable. Thanks again. |
