After her owners, Randall and Alicia Napier went on vacation, Lucy decided to take a little trip of her own.

Lucy, a basset hound, was little 2-year-old Jacob Napier’s protector and friend.

Relatives were taking care of her when she broke loose from a tie out. Two days later and six miles away, a woman picked her up on Leatherwood and called 911 to find out what to do with her.

She was told to take the dog to the pound and tie her to the fence and when the dog warden came in, he would take the dog inside.

In the meantime, another woman was driving by the Lawrence County Dog Pound and saw Lucy.

It was a hot day and the woman saw the dog didn’t have any water, so she took Lucy home with her. She found a home for Lucy right away in South Point.

During the month of June, as soon as the Napiers got back from vacation, they started an intensive search for Lucy.

“We hung flyers and went around to every subdivision near our home,” said Alicia Napier.

Her co-workers at Necco and Associates got involved and worked the search with them.

The first woman who picked up Lucy saw the flyer and called the Napiers. She told them about the 911 call and where she took Lucy.

The sheriff was going through reports to try to find where she had called and if a deputy was called to pick her up.

“Everybody was looking for this dog,” said Ruthann DeLong, Alicia’s co-worker.

Lonnie Best, the 911 supervisor, went through tape after tape trying to find the one about Lucy. He never found it.

“She was on a West Virginia cell phone and her phone call was most likely directed to them,” Napier said.

So, they decided to run an ad in The Ironton Tribune. The woman who picked up Lucy at the pound saw the ad and connected the Napiers with the people she gave her to in South Point.

“We met at Foodfair in South Point,” Napier said. “That was on June 29. She was fine, but because of her nerves we had to take her to the vet. She had some kind of fungus, a yeast infection in her ears and an allergy. She has mainly been laying around and enjoying herself.”