Missing Cane Corso returned to owner after being lost for more than 500 days

Missing Cane Corso dog Buddy lying on the kitchen floor
(Image credit: Fox5)

You’ve got to love an unlikely happy ending and for a missing Cane Corso dog and his owner, that’s exactly what’s just happened. 

Buddy was just nine months old when he became spooked during a training session and ran off and now, more than 500 days later, he’s finally been reunited with his ecstatic owner.

“Took him to PetSmart for his training, we were doing a walking technique, and Buddy ran out of the door,” explains Jacquawn Cummings.

She says she was quick to start posting photos of Buddy on social media in the hope that someone would find him and bring him home, but even with numerous sightings, it took more than a year to reunite the pair.

“I started getting phone calls from the community all over Fort Washington. Buddy was in their area, he was on people’s decks, he was in people’s yards, drinking water, eating food from the trash and everything,” Cummings said in an interview with Fox5.

Buddy continued to evade capture and it wasn’t until 538 days later, when a woman who was looking for her lost dog spotted a dog who looked like Buddy at a local shelter, that Cummings finally got her beloved pup back.

“She went to the shelter looking for her dog and she remembered the post. And we went the next day and it was him,” a delighted Cummings describes with a big smile on her face. “It was him.”

Cummings says her Facebook timeline has been overwhelmed with messages since she got Buddy back. “I think more than anything, for me it was so many people who cared who didn’t even know us.”

And while Buddy may have been missing for over a year, Cummings never gave up hope. “I knew we would get him back. I didn’t know it was going to take 538 days, but I knew.” 

Kathryn Williams
Freelance writer

Kathryn is a freelance writer who has been a member of the PetsRadar family since it launched in 2020. Highly experienced in her field, she's driven by a desire to provide pet parents with accurate, timely, and informative content that enables them to provide their fur friends with everything they need to thrive. Kathryn works closely with vets and trainers to ensure all articles offer the most up-to-date information across a range of pet-related fields, from insights into health and behavior issues to tips on products and training. When she’s not busy crafting the perfect sentence for her features, buying guides and news pieces, she can be found hanging out with her family (which includes one super sassy cat), drinking copious amounts of Jasmine tea and reading all the books.