Slow down, I wanna get off.....

What a day.......

Does this ever get any easier !?

This morning we had an email from our local Police Officer Paul who said that a very kind lady had called him and was concerned she might have seen Jacob.....

in Welshpool, Powys.

At first I thought - surely not, it cannot be, but as those of you know, you cannot doubt anything where a dog is concerned. They are not always in control of how and where they get somewhere, and of course within a few hours they can be halfway across the UK, or in this case Wales.

I left a message to that lady who spoke to Paul, and waited for her to call me back.

Meanwhile I contacted all the dog wardens in that immediate area, and unfortunately was told they only take calls between 8am and 10am each day.

A very helpful lady at the council agreed that I could email her all of ours, and Jacobs essentials along with a poster, and some clear photo's for identifying him if the need be.

So, this was done, and I sat back and hoped it wasn't Jacob, then I hoped it was, as then at least if they had him, we could be home by midnight with our boy safely back where he belongs.

I called the lady again around 4pm this afternoon, and she picked up. She had just that second walked in only to find herself being bombarded with questions from me.

She was really kind and answered everything with great precision and detail, even down to the exact places she had seen this stray dog.

I wrote down absolutely everything she told me, and we agreed for the sake of ruling this out for sure that I would email her clear photo's of Jacob, to which she would be able to really see the distinct shade of his colouring, and see if it matched what she remembered she saw.

This was all done and dusted, and we knew we could do no more until the dog warden and the lady had checked details.

Surely he couldn't have been picked up the day after he went missing ?

But then, everything is just a possibility now.

At 9.45pm tonight the lady from Welshpool very kindly called back.

She had taken time tonight to investigate and call a meeting in her area of people who she thought could help us, and it now materialises that a farmer in the area the dog was spotted has a young, light coloured hound, who quite often is loose in that same area as the dog in question. They all came to the same conclusion that this is what dog she saw, and it most definitely wasn't Jacob.

I don't know if we were relieved, or sad to be truthful, I guess a little bit of both.

Sad that perhaps it could actually have been him, and we might have been able to retrieve him from a kennel somewhere in Wales, but then on the flip side, relieved it wasn't him in case he was loose in a very strange and far away place that none of us would know where to start to look.

I'd like to say a huge Thank You to this lady for taking the time to call, I wish there were more people out there doing just the same as one of them could lead us to Jacob.

One thing we decided to do, was to really try to see that the rangers at Audley End did definitely see Jacob on the Monday after he went missing.

We aren't doubting what they saw, we just need to know 100% that Jacob was the dog running about there that afternoon. As we have a few niggling doubts perhaps about the Purton End sighting, we need to have some form of reassurance that Jacob was at Audley End that day. Otherwise, worryingly, he would not have been seen since Jon last saw him running into the distance on the 21st January.

One thing that struck a chord tonight, the kind lady all the way away, some 175 miles from our area, had taken the time to call up the police after the 2nd sighting of a dog she perhaps thought just possibly could have been our missing dog. She took time and effort to rule it out for the sake of knowing how much we wanted to find him.

Surely it goes to prove that others would have most probably have seen the same dog, and just totally dismissed it even though it was running loose, dirty looking and wandering nearby a road on it's own, quite clearly not with any owner in sight.

Belies belief really, and yet, here we are 4 weeks later, and in the local area, and where supposedly only 2 people have seen Jacob in all that time he has been lost.

What does this mean ?

Are people scared of involvement ? if so WHY?

Does it mean that he has been/is laying hurt or injured somewhere and has unfortunately succumbed to that injury, hindered only by the bad weather and freezing temperatures ?

Does it mean that because he hasn't necessarily been seen, it's because he isn't in this area to be seen ?

I don't know, but I do know that between Jon and I we have to remain positive and think that he can survive out there, yes it's a vast, vast area, yes we've covered an awful lot of ground in the last 4 weeks between us (personally for us some 600+ miles just in the car alone) but hey, it doesn't mean we've covered the ground where he is at.

Hopefully that day will come soon.

I'll only accept a HAPPY ending for this story, absolutely NO substitutes.