Elderly, blind dog survives disappearance

EVANSTON, Ill., Sept. 15 (UPI) -- An elderly blind and nearly deaf Boston terrier is staying close to home after going missing for 13 days and surviving a fall into a window well in Illinois.

Owner Robin Tennant of Evanston plastered posters throughout the North Shore after her beloved 12-year-old terrier, Zoe, wandered away, the Chicago Tribune reported Saturday.

"The shelters told me to assume after one week she would be dead," said Tennant, who kept looking for Zoe, who lost one eye to glaucoma and has cataracts in the other.

Thirteen days after after Zoe was last seen, a gardener trimming a hedge spotted her in a 6-foot-deep window well at a neighbor's house just 40 feet from Tennant's. "He thought she was dead," said the neighbor, Ruth Singer. "But then she moved."

Zoe was dirty and had lost six pounds, about half her weight, but proved to be in fairly good condition.

"It's really a miracle," Tennant said Friday. "It's almost a spiritual experience having her back when I thought she was dead. I'm so grateful."