A man who spotted a lost dog dodging cars in a road in Hayes has helped reunite it with its owners.
Manjinder Bains spotted the young Labrador while driving along Coronation Road on Thursday (22) morning. It was distressed and narrowly avoided being hit by the traffic before cowering under a car.
Mr Bains was driving to Villiers High School in Southall, where he works as director of finance, when he saw the dog at around 9.30am.
The 32-year-old animal lover said: "A driver had just managed to dodge the dog, which was now hiding under a car, he was scared. I pulled over and went towards the dog. I knelt down near it, and he started sniffing me. I wanted to gain his trust.”
A passerby said the dog belonged to a person a few doors away, but when this proved incorrect, Mr Bains spent more time with the pet before picking him up and placing the animal in his car. He knocked on more doors and drove around nearby Cranford Park to speak to dog walkers there but had no joy finding the owner.
Mr Bains eventually returned with the animal to his home in Hayes, where he and his wife wrapped a coat around the cold and shivering dog and fed it some food. He then took the animal to Animals Are Us vets in Station Road, Hayes, at around 10.45am, hoping a scan of the microchip would reveal the dog’s address.
However, the pet had not been chipped and Mr Bains was faced with the prospect of handing the dog over to the RSPCA or Battersea Dogs’ Home.
He said: “I didn’t want to do that. The dog had a collar and was well-mannered, he would sit and walk on command. You could tell he had been trained.”
But as he was getting into his car, a receptionist ran out of the practice to say that someone was one the phone asking if a six-month-old white lab had been handed in after getting lost on its morning walk.
It later emerged that the dog was being taken for a stroll by a dog walker, and a good friend of the dog owner, when it got lost, and it is still unknown if the owner of the dog is aware of their pet’s plight. The pet and carers were united not long after 11am.
Mr Bains thinks the dog was lucky. He said: "It just narrowly avoided a car, and I was lucky to drive by and see and help him. Also he didn’t have a chip and I was just about to drive away from the vets when they phoned in. So knowing this is a national of animal lovers I thought this was a nice story with a happy ending."
Last week we covered the story of a pair of dog owners who were raising the alarm after their pet died from drinking antifreeze left by someone in Ruislip woods.
