SITKA, Alaska – An Alaska family had given up hope of finding their blind, elderly golden retriever who wandered away from their home three weeks ago, but a construction crew found Lulu in salmon thickets after initially mistaking her for a bear.
Lulu was barely alive when she was found Tuesday, but is receiving treatment and is back home with her family, the Daily Sitka Sentinel reported.
“She means everything,” owner Ted Kubaki said. “I have five daughters and they range in age from 4 to 13, so they’ve spent every day of their lives with this dog.”
The Kubacki family has been searching for weeks after Lulu wandered off on June 18.
“She’s just so helpless and you kind of imagine she can’t get really far because she can’t see,” he said.
It didn’t help when the family was the subject of a terrible joke when someone claimed to have found Lulu a few days after the search.
“We’d put the kids to bed and we’d get a text saying ‘We found your dog’ or ‘I’ve got your dog’ and we were like, ‘Oh my God, that’s amazing,'” he said. “Then the guy texted me, ‘Just kidding.’ It happened, yes, it was all part of this terrible story.
After weeks of searching, the family lost hope.
But then this week, a construction crew spotted Lulu lying in the bushes on the side of a road not far from the Kubacki family’s home. She was about 15 feet down the embankment and the crew initially thought she was a bear.
“They took a closer look and realized it was a dog and they got her out of there,” Kubachki said.
All the sadness melted away when she got the call that Lulu had been found.
“I called my wife from work and she’s just screaming… She just starts screaming, then she’s screaming at the kids. And I just hear them screaming like crazy,” Kubacki said.
Although alive, Lulu was in poor condition. The 80-pound dog had lost 23 pounds since it was lost; she was dehydrated, dirty and her fur was matted.
“I was just expecting to come back and be like, ‘Hey, there’s my dog.’ She’ll jump up and wag her tail and kiss my face, and she can’t even lift her head,” he said. “She had been through the wringer.”
Lulu’s condition has improved significantly with medical care, food and rest.
“Slowly but surely she started eating and somehow managed to lift her head,” Kubaki said. “But yesterday she stood up on her front paws by herself like snuggled up to me and kissed me and wagged her tail and it was just great.”
A day later she could stand on her own.
Kubacki, a grocery store clerk and sole breadwinner for his family of seven, then worries about the vet bill.
Those fears were unfounded, as Sitka residents donated hundreds of dollars to cover Lulu’s recovery bills.
“We have our family member’s home,” Kubaki said.
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