Brad Schofro was laser-focused on his computer screen when he suddenly heard his dog barking loudly through his headphones.
“She just started absolutely losing her mind,” said Schofro, 27, who lives in Lebanon, Tennessee. “She started barking like crazy, borderline screaming.”
Zoie – a 3-year-old golden retriever – was standing by a window facing Schofro’s front lawn, clearly troubled by something outside. This behavior, Schofro said, was unusual for her.
“Zoie never barks at anything,” he said. “My first thought was, ‘Is someone trying to rob my house?’”
Concerned, Schofro rushed to the window where Zoie stood. He immediately understood why the dog was frantic.
“I saw what looked to be a 3-year-old boy walking on the driveway of our next-door neighbor,” Schofro said.
The small child was alone. It was midafternoon on March 17.
Schofro ran outside and alerted his neighbor.
“I went to talk to him to make sure it wasn’t one of his kids or a kid he knew,” he said.
Schofro and the neighbor tried asking the toddler who he was and what he was doing there, but that didn’t work.
“He just kind of shrugged, never said a word,” Schofro said, adding that the boy gestured to a house across the street.
They stopped by that house with the toddler, but no one recognized him. Those neighbors then joined the search for the child’s caregivers, going door-to-door.
“We were doing everything we could to find out where this kid came from,” Schofro said.
He decided to call the police, and when he told the operator he found a young boy, the operator asked: “Is he wearing gray sweatpants?”
Schofro confirmed he was, and “I hear her yell across the room, ‘They found him!’”
Officers arrived minutes later to retrieve the child.
FULL STORY: https://torontosun.com/news/world/golden-retriever-helps-rescue-missing-toddler
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