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LOST DOG FOUND Hugo resident reunited with Australian shepherd after seven weeks of searching Comment By Buffy Pollock for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Buffy Pollock for the Mail Tribune Posted Sep. 2, 2016 at 6:07 PM Updated Sep 3, 2016 at 9:32 AM By Buffy Pollock for the Mail Tribune Posted Sep. 2, 2016 at 6:07 PM Updated Sep 3, 2016 at 9:32 AM » RELATED CONTENT • Hugo man offering $5,000 reward for missing dog finds scammers along the way... » Social News After seven weeks of searching for his 2-year-old Australian shepherd and making local headlines with his offer of a $5,000 reward, Hugo resident Frank Smith's ordeal is over. Smith was reunited with Spot on Thursday afternoon, less than a half-mile from where she'd gone missing July 12. "As soon as I had her, my eyes started to water," says Smith, 46. "Before I could even get the rest of the way to her, she headed into the bushes and just jumped in the air and I had to tell myself to put my arms out to catch her." Wearing a tank top and shorts, Smith dove through a thicket of blackberries behind the Square Dance Center along Table Rock Road to get her. It was less than a half mile from the Southern Oregon Veterinarian Specialty Clinic, where Spot had escaped after emergency treatment. Smith's posters dominated social media and local headlines for the size of the reward he offered and for the chaos he'd endured in his quest to find his missing dog. Smith had searched day and night, lived part-time in Medford, fended off pet psychics, hired search and rescue teams and checked on countless reports of roadkill. All told, he'd spent over $7,000 on efforts to bring her home and had endured scammers and countless dead ends. By the time Central Point resident Angelo Bramucci called Smith, just after 1 p.m. on Thursday, Smith had "heard it all" but he never expected Spot was still patiently waiting so close to where she'd been lost. Bramucci was driving from Central Point to Jacksonville on Thursday afternoon. Sitting at the intersection of Four Corners, Bramucci, who says he had sympathized with Smith when he saw news reports about Spot, almost headed through Central Point, down Hamrick. Instead, he turned down Table Rock Road. "I was driving past the square dancing hall and I look over and see this dog rooting around in the bushes and I instantly thought, 'Oh, that looks like the dog that's on all the posters from that guy who was in the paper," he says. Bramucci drove to Jacksonville to finish his errand, then called both his fiancé, Samantha Sturgeon, and Smith. "When I called him I said, 'I'm 99 percent sure I found your dog. I know you have to drive a long way so I'm not trying to B.S. you but I'm just almost positive this is her.'" Smith says he almost sent Bramucci's call to voicemail. "I had kind of got to the point of thinking, 'Here we go again,'" Smith says, noting he had been in White City earlier that day checking on fliers and looking for leads on finding Spot. With some of the signs withered and folded over, he wondered whether he should replace the signs or start to take them down. "It had gotten to be a pretty depressing situation after seven weeks. People would ask me, 'Are you really still looking for your dog?'" Smith says. Still, for the umpteenth time, Smith took the call and made the trek from Hugo to Medford. "I knew I wouldn't be able to live with the fact that the one call I didn't answer or the one possibility I didn't check out had been her," he says, noting that he and Bramucci's family searched for about an hour. "When she popped her head up from the blackberries, I couldn't believe it was her. I just couldn't believe it," Smith says. "I was starting to think I'd never see her again. I couldn't really get to her because of the blackberries but I've dug through worse while I was looking for her, so I finally just went in after her. I was all cut up and I couldn't even feel it." Bramucci likened Smith's reunion with Spot to "what it must be like to see a parent reunited with a lost child." "When we first saw the story in the paper, we looked at each other and said how cool it would be just to help find his dog and not take any reward but just find her because he obviously loved her so much," Bramucci says, noting that he tried, repeatedly, to refuse Smith's reward. "It was just priceless to see him with his dog. The look on his face. You can't put it into words." After a quick drive home to reunite Spot with her family, Smith spent most of Thursday in Medford, getting the dog checked out — within eyeshot, he noted — and taking down countless fliers. With his story shared all over social media, a community Facebook page in Central Point urged neighbors to help remove fliers while others posted comments about helping Smith recoup the costs of his search. The reward and expenses to find Spot, however, were far from Smith's mind on Friday. "I wish I could ask her to tell me all the stories of what's happened to her for seven weeks," he says. "I wish she could understand what I was going through to find her for seven weeks. Everything I've been through, it was all worth it just to have her back home. ... I'm just so happy to have her back." Reach freelance writer Buffy Pollock at [email protected]. By Buffy Pollock for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Buffy Pollock for the Mail Tribune Posted Sep. 2, 2016 at 6:07 PM Updated Sep 3, 2016 at 9:32 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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