A canine adventurer took a 100-mile taxi ride with a family of holidaymakers after he became separated from his owners on a walk.
Three-year-old Cavapoo Ralph vanished while his owner, Georgia Crewe, 28, took him to a beauty spot on Monday (February 13) morning. While Georgia looked around for her pup, Ralph decided to take himself to Manchester Airport after hopping through the open door of a cab.
Georgia said the driver had pulled over to pick up a family near Wrexham, North Wales, when the mischievous pooch made the daring escape. When the taxi driver noticed Ralph, he couldn't spot any identification markings and was unable to contact anyone - so he divided the best course of action was to take him along for the ride.
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After the airport drop, the driver took Ralph home to Mold, Flintshire, and went on the hunt for his owners. Just a few hours later, Georgia received a phone call form a friend of the driver who had seen her on a social media appeal.
She said: “He’s never done anything like this before. And I didn’t even mind. I was quite impressed that he had the sense to jump in the cab. He loves people, and he’s not afraid of anybody. So he just jumped in. The cabby didn’t know what to do. He had to do an airport run. So he decided to take him with him.
“I was worried that he would try and make his way home and try and cross the road and the worst would happen. But he had the sense to find safety, and it’s incredible to have him back.”
She added: “We always get up early in the morning and go for a walk. It was dark. He’s normally really good on his walks. But I turned around and he wasn’t there.
“At that point in the quarry, where we were walking, I could pick four different directions to go. So I picked our normal direction, but he didn’t turn up.
“We spent the next three hours walking and looking for him. We had friends and locals looking for him, but there was no head nor tail of him."
Georgia wrote an appeal on Facebook with his pictures to alert local people that he was missing. As luck would have it, she got a phone call four hours later from a woman called Becky who said he'd been on a 100-mile trip to Manchester Airport in her friend's taxi.
She said: “At 9am, we got a phone call as someone had seen my Facebook post. It was Becky. She told me what happened. Ralph had been walking in a direction towards home. He was obviously cold, and a cab pulled up to pick up a family going to the airport for a holiday.
“The cabby tried to keep him warm, and the people going to the airport were really nice. He had dropped the family at the airport, and then the cabby made his way back to his house, which is in Mold. His friend Becky looked on Facebook and gave us a call.”
After picking him up, she made sure to fit him with an identifiable collar and a tracking device to make sure he doesn't go missing again. She added: "He had a new collar on him, and it didn’t have his details. But now he has it - and an apple air tag as well."
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