A very special two-year-old dog in Illinois is back home with his family after he escaped the safety of his backyard.
The story began a few weeks ago when Lex wanted to go outside and play, WGN 9 reported Sunday.
“So I let him out,” his owner, Jon Rollins, recalled. “And then I went back to watch some TV and I would say about five minutes later, I got an alert on my watch saying that Lex had left the property.”
Rollins and his dog are both deaf, and Eli, Jon’s son, was at home when the pup escaped.
“Since he’s a deaf dog, we can’t just go calling out for him,” Eli explained. “He won’t hear us. I was so worried because we just got him and I was so scared of anything ever happening to him.”
Last year, the Rollins family adopted Lex from a shelter that rescues deaf and blind dogs, called Speak St. Louis, and Allison Rollins, the mother of the family, said she was happy to bring him home.
However, they did take safety precautions.
“We were worried about him getting out and she told us about Fi, the collar, so we were relieved that there was something like that for sure,” Allison noted.
According to its website, the collar allows owners to track their dogs at all times and any place.
When Lex went missing, Jon was extremely worried and the biggest concern was a busy intersection that was not far away.
“I stopped and thought, ‘maybe the app on the phone will tell me where Lex is,'” Jon said. “I look, and I say ‘yes, he’s one block on the other side of the street.'”
He immediately headed in that direction.
“I went over there and I saw a family petting something and I thought it might be Lex. So I drove to that family and they said ‘is that your dog?’ And I said ‘yes, yes,'” Jon explained.
Now, the family is relieved to have their beloved pet safe at home again.
“If we didn’t have the tracker, I don’t know if we would have ever found him,” Eli stated, adding, “or if we found him, it would’ve taken a very long time.”