Dog reunited after 550-mile trip

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Lucy was reunited with her owners, Sonya and William McKerron, on Tuesday

Owners of a dog which had been missing for more than four months have been left wondering how she ended up more than 550 miles away in East Lothian.

Sonya and William McKerron said 17-year-old collie, Lucy, vanished within minutes of them turning their backs at their home in Cornwall on 6 February.

They told BBC Scotland how they hunted everywhere for her but to no avail.

They had given up hope of seeing their dog again when they received a call from the Edinburgh Dog and Cat Home.

Lucy was reunited with her owners on Tuesday after they received a call on Saturday and drove up from their cottage in Cornwall.

A family in Haddington called the police when they found Lucy had wandered into their garden and she was taken to the Edinburgh Dog and Cat Home to be scanned for a micro-chip.

Mrs McKerron said: "It feels overwhelming to see her as we didn't think we would ever find her again.

When we saw her chip had a Cornish phone number we thought we would just try it but we were expecting it to be an old number and that her owners had moved Dave Ewing Edinburgh Dog and Cat Home

"I was in the house and I went to the toilet and when I came out she was gone from the drive, never to be seen again.

"We hunted high and low, phoned everybody including rescue centres and because she is chipped we thought we would find her.

"She is not a wanderer but from now on I will be keeping an eye on her so that nobody steals her."

Dave Ewing, Edinburgh Dog and Cat Home manager, said he suspected Lucy had been taken by someone rather than having just become lost.

"I am confident Lucy was taken by someone either because they thought she was genuinely lost and they were doing her a favour or they knew they shouldn't have taken her.

"When we saw her chip had a Cornish phone number we thought we would just try it but we were expecting it to be an old number and that her owners had moved.

"So the staff here were over the moon to find the owners still lived there and that they could be reunited with Lucy."

He added that it proved that chipping pets "pays off".