Dog lover William Moore has been reunited with the ashes of his two dogs more than two years after they vanished from his home.
The little caskets hold the remains of Yorkshire Terriers, Tilly and Charlie, who passed away 11 years ago.
In a bizarre set of circumstances, they were discovered at the back of a TV unit which had been sold to a Co Down woman in 2020 via the Marketplace on Facebook .
It was only when Laura Laurie was desperately searching for a remote control in her own home, she saw the caskets at the back of the unit, held in place by rubberised pads. And when she pulled them out to see what they were, she discovered her TV unit had been home to the last remains of two little dogs.
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Former shipyard worker, William, 66, said: "I have to thank Laura for bothering to do this and trying to find me. Those wee dogs were precious to me and in particular my late wife Mary Jane. I was upset when the ashes went missing. Mary and I had lived in Swindon for a long time and I stayed there after she died 18 years ago.
"But seven years ago my family finally persuaded me to move home to Belfast and I moved in with my daughter Joanne. The dogs were quite old by then, Tilly, Charlie and Dixie and they came with me and we settled into life in Northern Ireland.
"Sadly though old age had caught up with all three of the dogs and over a period of a year they each got sick and had to be put to sleep and of course I kept their ashes. By 2012 I had three wee caskets that held their remains and I planned to be cremated and have them buried with me and my wife Mary, at Roselawn Cemetery when the time came. But then two of the caskets vanished and I was at a loss as to how to find them."
After he settled into life in Belfast, William moved into his own pensioner's bungalow two years ago and took Dixie's casket in the move, and it has sat on its own since then on a side table in the sitting room.
William said: "We looked everywhere for Tilly and Charlie's ashes, we emptied every cupboard and drawer in my daughter's house but they were nowhere to be found and we never thought that they might still be in the TV until that was sold.
"Then on Thursday my grandson was reading Belfast Live and he saw the story about the lady who found these mystery boxes and he asked me if they might have been the ones I lost. I couldn't believe it. I looked at the photos and right enough, there was Tilly's name and Charlie's name. It was a relief to know they were safe."
Belfast Live's sister site DogsLive was inundated with messages in a bid to have William reunited with Tilly and Charlie and on Friday the caskets were collected in East Belfast from Laura and taken to West Belfast to finally join Dixie's casket in William's home.
William said: "I'm grateful to Laura, to Belfast Live and DogsLive for actually bothering with this. A lot of people might have just thrown them out but dog lovers will understand why this was important to me.
"These dogs were precious to me and my wife and they were an important link to Mary Jane who died when she was just 56. I've carried those caskets on planes and ferries in the past 11 years - they're part of who we are in our family. So to be reunited with them is a fantastic feeling.
"Now they will sit together in my sitting room and when I die, they'll be put in with me and then me and Mary, my two sisters Kathleen, Ellen, Dixie, Charlie and Tilly and maybe by then my two dogs now, Tilly 2 and Poppy, will rest together.
"It just goes to show that people do care - they care about dogs and they know how important dogs are to family life."
