Just the thought of losing your child brings shutters and despair. You are worried. You are scared and you just want to know where your baby is. This was all too true for an Alabama family who called the police when their 3-year-old boy turned up missing. The police brought in search crews who begin to try to locate the little boy.
It seems that the little boy awoke around 3:00 am and went to look for his father, who had left to go to work. "Apparently, the little boy woke up, and the door didn't close all the way when his daddy left. The little boy went out looking for his daddy," Sheriff's Deputy Joe Shanes said. "Everybody was looking around the woods and everywhere else. No one had any idea which way he went," said Shanes, who is also the Lauderdale County Sheriff's Department's canine officer. Shanes arrived with Fox, a tracking and drug K9, who went to work as soon as the car door opened.
"When Fox, a Belgian Malinois, got out of the car, he ran behind the car and then started across the road," Shanes said. "I hollered at him, but he just kept going. Then, he just sat down. I went over to him to put his leash on, and the little boy was standing there behind a tree. He saw me and said, 'Hey.' " Shanes said he asked the little boy what he was doing, and he answered looking for his daddy. "Then he ran to me and grabbed my leg," Shanes said. "I took him across the street to his parents and let paramedics check him out." Shanes believes that Fox spotted the little boy when they pulled up to the search area and took off to check out the situation.
The little boy was very lucky because he crossed the Alabama 17, which is heavily traveled by tractor-trailer trucks traveling at high speeds. Fox had only been on the scene for 10 minutes before the little boy was found.