Whatever it takes

To many, pets are like family. So when they go missing, some will go to great lengths to bring the animal home

When Kate Sanders lost her dog, she decided a simple search would not do. She left a photo and fresh food and water for Henry. (Globe Staff / Suzanne Kreiter)

WAYLAND - In search of Henry, Kate Sanders decided that just driving around and plastering the suburbs with neon signs wasn't going to be enough. She needed a helicopter. The cost: $300 an hour. And even though the effort didn't bring Sanders any closer to finding Henry, her missing yellow Labrador retriever, she believes it was worth it.

"It sounds really crazy," said Sanders, a Wayland resident, amid the search last week. "But he's my best friend. And I can't give up on him."

Plenty of people can understand that. Pets, to many, are members of the family. And in some affluent suburban communities, owners of lost pets are not satisfied with posting a few signs and waiting at home for a call.

With cellphones in hand, and computers screens aglow, some pet owners are devising savvy marketing campaigns to spread the word about missing pets. And like Sanders and her fiancé, John Pedersen, they will stop at almost nothing: organizing search parties, creating websites dedicated to the lost animal, and even using public relations agencies to try to place stories in local media.

At least twice in recent years, searches for dogs have captivated people in the suburbs. The names of these dogs - Harley in Sudbury in 2004 and Cody in Wayland last summer - became well known. But locals say the search for Henry, who went missing March 10, captured the imagination of suburbanites like no other in recent memory. And even though the effort ended in sadness last week with the discovery of Henry's body, people marveled at how a dog, and his loving owners, could bring a community together.

Schoolchildren, pizza delivery men, and local police all knew about Sanders's dog. How could they not? Signs could be found from Wayland to Framingham, Sudbury to Lincoln. Henry had a website dedicated to his return, missinghenry.com. And most of all, the friendly yellow lab had on his side the stubborn persistence of his owners. They plastered their black BMWs with signs. They briefly offered, at one point, a $5,000 reward. But then dialed it back to $2,000, where it stood Thursday when the dog was found.

Pedersen, president of a division at Boston Scientific, said he was worried that offering too much money for a dog would encourage "weird behavior." And maybe it was weird enough already, Sanders conceded last week amid the madness of the search. Her cellphone would ring from 6 a.m. every morning to well after dark every night as people called to report possible Henry sightings. Everyone was sure they had seen him.

He was in Natick. He was in Weston. He was at a country club in Wayland, an orchard in Stow. He had been stolen. He had been killed by coyotes. He was dead on the side of the road.

"It's so frustrating," said Sanders one day last week, circling the suburbs and answering phone call after phone call. "He's a neutered male," she told one caller.

"He's 2."

"I really appreciate your call."

"If you could just keep calling Henry."

A generation ago, some people might have loved their pets enough to launch a widespread search. But in a land-line, analog world, a desperate pet owner would have struggled to connect with people and, ultimately, after posting signs, would have been sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring.

Today, cellphones have made the search mobile. Websites such as Petfinder and Fido Finder, and e-mail chains, allow folks to post news about a missing pet in an instant. SABER alerts - think AMBER Alerts for missing children - allow the Animal Control Officers Association of Massachusetts to spread information about a lost dog across the state. And with these resources on hand, some pet owners are increasingly willing to do just about anything to bring a pet home again.

"I lived in my van for 60 days," said Karen Ash, a New Hampshire dog breeder whose Portuguese water dog, Harley, was lost in Sudbury in 2004. "I literally lived in my van. And anywhere there were sightings of her, I camped out. I searched the woods."

Along the way, Ash broke her ankle and racked up $4,000 in cellphone charges. But it was worth it, Ash said, when she finally found Harley after two months of searching.

Gary and Deirdre Levine, a Needham couple, had similar success last August in relocating their dog, Cody, a border collie mix. But it wasn't easy, said Gary Levine, CEO of a software company. In the 11 days that Cody was missing, Levine said he didn't work. He was too busy printing up 2,500 postcards, delivering them on foot with his wife, launching a website complete with a Google map tracking Cody sightings, and even asking a public relations team to help out.

By the end, when Cody was found near Wayland High School and curled up in Gary Levine's arms, the skittish black dog had become something of a local icon. "Cody was spotted here," signs said across Wayland. People who didn't even know the Levines combed the streets of suburbia on the hunt for a dog they had never met, and Levine wasn't surprised to hear the same thing happened for Henry this month.

"The people we met in the Wayland area, the love they have for their dogs is remarkable," he said. "It just went on and on and on, to the point where 20 people I'd never met before showed up at a search party at 6 in the morning to go looking for my dog. And it shocked me that people were so caring. It was purely out of the goodness of their hearts."

Throughout her 17-day search, Sanders, a slender, 34-year-old British woman, felt the same thing. People she had never met hung signs for her and walked the streets calling for her dog. Strangers hugged her and schoolchildren called in tips. For the third time in three weeks, a search party was scheduled for this morning. And as usual, Sanders expected volunteers to fan out in search of Henry. But on Thursday, while in her backyard, she found him. Henry had been right there all along. Apparently he had fallen through some ice, and into shallow water, in a partially installed swimming pool.

Pedersen said it was the first place they looked. "But somehow we missed it," he said. "I don't know."

The search was over. Henry, the dog, was gone.

Keith O'Brien can be reached at kobrien@globe.com.