Never Give Up Looking for Lost Pets

By Eileen Cahil

When Mia Sagara printed "lost dog" posters at work, she got a reprimand. Co-workers at her English hagwon (crams school) told her to give up looking for the little brown and white dog she'd rescued two months earlier

Sagara, 40, had bronchitis and barely had the strength to keep working, but she checked the online lost-and-found listings every day and used social networking sites to publicize Fuzzy's picture.

She knows she made mistakes: Fuzzy wasn't wearing an ID tag the day he ran away in June. She'd meant to get him neutered and microchipped, but put it off because a hostile work environment was affecting her health.

Sagara was walking Fuzzy near her home in Seoul when she needed a drink to soothe her sore throat. She left him tied up outside while she ran into a coffee shop.

From the window she saw a strange man. Though Fuzzy was affectionate and loving with Sagara, he was skittish with strangers.

"I could see Fuzzy through the glass," she told The Korea Times. "He was looking right at me and was calm Then a guy came and started petting him He seemed OK.

Then, seconds after I turned my head, a woman came screaming."

"Your dog!" the woman yelled.

Somehow Fuzzy's harness had come undone in front of a group of children, who thought they were helping when they chased the dog down a side street.

Sagara ran out of the coffee shop and yelled at the children to stop, but Fuzzy disappeared.

So she walked around and approached neighbors, extending her cell phone to show them Fuzzy's picture.

"The first two nights after losing Fuzzy I slept outside by garbage," she said.

Every night she walked the streets posting signs, but there was no sign of Fuzzy.

"I ripped up T-shirts of mine and tied them to trees, fences and poles for a few miles," she said.

Two weeks passed, and Sagara was losing hope, but she hired a company to put up 2,000 posters. One night in July, she got a tip.

Someone had seen a stray dog while hiking and texted a blurry picture to Sagara's Korean friend.

The...