Nov 20, 2009 8:19 pm US/Eastern
Dog Goes Missing After Surviving NJ Car Accident
Owner Worried Sick About Missing Havanese Named Harley
MUTTONTOWN, N.Y. (CBS) ―
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One minute, Cerami was driving down the highway with her Havanese. The next, her car skidded on the wet road and flipped. When Cerami came to, she was pinned inside and Harley was gone.
CBS
An amazing story of survival has been marred by heartbreak in New Jersey.
A dog went missing just after it escaped a terrible car crash. Now, its devastated owner wants is just praying it's found soon and home for the holidays.
"If you ever saw him, he's adorable," Harley's owner, Sue Cerami, says. "He's like a living stuffed teddy bear."
One minute, Cerami was driving down the highway with her Havanese. The next, her car skidded on the wet road and flipped. When Cerami came to, she was pinned inside and Harley was gone.
"I was screaming for my dog, screaming for my dog, saying, 'I have to find my dog,'" Cerami says. "The paramedic was saying, 'you cannot move your head,' so I was just trapped there."
EMS supervisor Jack Baker was that paramedic. After he saved Cerami, a witness told him she'd seen Harley.
"She said that she had seen the dog running eastbound on the westbound side of the highway," Baker says. "I then got in my vehicle and went eastbound, and turned around and came west, in an attempt to locate the dog."
There was no sign of Harley, but Baker didn't let that discourage him.
The traditional way to look for a lost pet is to put up a sign in the neighborhood, but there are new ways, using new technologies, these days to go about looking for a missing animal.
Cerami created a Facebook group to find her dog, posting pictures and enlisting the help of people across New Jersey. One of those people is the local animal control officer, and he maintains hope that they'll find Harley, even a month after the accident.
"The dog is somewhere out there – no bodies of any dogs have been found on Route 80, the state police have been looking," chief animal control officer John Decando says. "Everybody's been looking for this dog, plus there's a $2,000 reward. She wants her dog back, she wants her child back.
Cerami, Decando, and Baker say they've been overwhelmed by the public support.
"A lot of Citizens in the city also helped out, and they weren't concerned about the reward – they just wanted to find the dog," Baker says.
"I'll keep looking until I get him back, that's how long I'll keep looking," Cerami says. "I'll never give up. He's just a part of the family, he's my family."
Harley is a part of Cerami's family that much of the community is hoping makes it home for the holidays.
CBS 2's Josh Landis contributed to this report.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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