Granite State Dog Recovery: https://www.facebook.com/granitestatedogrecovery
Poster for Lydia, a Great Dane service dog who had gone missing Friday, Aug. 8, 2014. She returned home the next day and is no longer lost.
One of the people who trained Lydia, a Great Dane service dog who went missing Friday from the Jamaica Pond area, confirmed the 18-month-old dog found her own way home on Saturday.
Lydia apparently became spooked and ran off, but recovered her wits and showed up Saturday outside her new owner's home, said trainer Kati Whitley. Someone noticed the dog was beside a parked car and took the dog into the house.
Whitley said Lydia showed impressive smarts, since she had only been with her new owner less than a week.
The new owner is Joanna Leigh, a Boston Marathon bombing survivor who lives in JP. Leigh, a spectator on the day of the bombing, told NECN she suffered brain injury from the second blast as she came to help people hurt when the first bomb went off. Leigh received a small payment from the One Fund, the charity set up in the bombings' aftermath to help survivors. She has a Go Fund Me campaign to cover the cost of her ongoing rehabilitation.
Lydia was trained at the Service Dog Project in Ipswich to help their future handlers with mobility problems. For instance, a dog helped her owner cross the stage to receive her diploma at graduation.
The story of Lydia going missing gained widespread attention on social media while the search was on.
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