Lost dog found after 42 days in Yellowstone Park

Jade, an 18-month-old Australian shepherd that had been missing in Yellowstone National Park since a July 23 wreck has finally been reunited with her owner Sowers after 42 days in the wild.

Sowers and Gillice were seriously injured when their SUV was hit head-on while on driving on a Yellowstone road. The accident spooked Jade.

"When the Park Rangers tried to get her out of the car she bolted and ran into the woods," Sowers said.

Sowers was airlifted to a hospital out of fear that he had broken his neck. He came out of the ordeal with a broken arm, a broken leg, broken ribs – and a broken heart when he learned that Jade had bolted when park rangers whom she was in the care of opened a car door.

Sowers and his girlfriend posted signs in Yellowstone, started a Help Find Jade Facebook page and set traps with dog food.

They returned to Yellowstone several times to look for Jade and never gave up hope they would find her. Jade had been spotted numerous times by people around Canyon Village with increasing frequency in recent weeks.

Gillice had been waking up at daylight for the past several days, walking Leila and coercing her to bark in hopes that Jade would come running to see her playmate.

“It was a beautiful morning with the fog in the meadow and another couple had stopped to take pictures and out of the corner of my eye I saw this black and white movement,” Gillice said. “I asked the couple, because they had binoculars, ‘Is that a deer or a dog?’ and she said ‘It’s a dog.’ I just called to her in puppy voices. She just came running to me, like ‘Where’ve you been mom?’ "

“It’s a miracle,” Gillice said.

Efforts to find Jade have included fliers, leaving out blankets and clothes with Gillice's and Sowers’ scents on them, playing recordings of Dave calling to Leila on cellphones and speakers and live traps with wet dog food placed by park rangers.

The compassion of others has not been lost on Sowers.

“A lot of people have just dedicated their weekends to looking for her. It’s amazing, we didn’t think we’d ever see her again,” he said.

It’s a happy ending to a what at times was a heart-wrenching story for the Denver couple, but the final scenes are playing out to smiling faces.