'It’s unbelievable how she survived’: How the eight-day search for Molly rallied Rushworth

For more than a week, she sparked searches from dawn until dusk, as a community rallied together to bring her back home.

We’ll never know how thoroughly she planned the escape — where she went and how she survived — because Molly is a four-year-old Maltese shih tzu.

"It’s unbelievable she survived and came back. She’s such a small little dog.” — Chris Ross

The stories she would be able to tell, though, owner Chris Ross said, would fill a book.

Earlier this month, Chris and his wife, Jo, drove from their Gold Coast home to Rushworth, where Mr Ross has family and friends, before they went to Tasmania for a family wedding.

Mr Ross said Molly was an angel, who went with Mrs Ross most days to work with residents in aged care.

“Some of the residents up there were overcome with grief when they heard she was missing,” he said.

“They love her.”

She also, would you believe, has a history as an escape artist.

“We’ve got a pretty secure backyard but the second she sees the front door or garage door open she’s off,” Mr Ross said.

“Now she’s never getting off the lead again ... I’m going to go buy a GPS collar.”

Molly escaped from one of Mr Ross’s friend’s backyards, and despite the friend getting home quickly after a neighbour’s phone call, he got to within 15 metres of her before she bolted.

The friend then made the call to the Ross family.

When the family heard Molly had gone missing, there was never any thought of letting her go, and even days into the search there was never a question of giving up.

“She’s Jo’s girl through and through,” Mr Ross said.

“We were distraught, we’d have been absolutely lost without this girl.

“I was losing hope for a while though.”

Mr Ross flew back to Victoria after the wedding, two weeks early, in the hope he could find her.

That hope was only kept alive by intermittent sightings, one here, another two days later, kilometres away, as Molly roamed the countryside. What she ate, and how she survived, no-one knows.

In Rushworth, and across the region, the community rallied.

Mr Ross reached out on every Facebook page he could find, and Shepparton local Michelle Somerville — who didn’t know the Ross family from a bar of soap before Molly went missing — had printed and posted flyers around Rushworth.

Juanita Locke also got involved, and volunteers rallied to find the “special little dog”.

“We got a call from Michelle Somerville who offered to help, and before I knew it she was printing A4 coloured posters, laminating them up around town,” Mr Ross said.

“The community effort was overwhelming. Everyone wanted to help, my family were all getting involved.”

Ms Somerville said she saw the call-out on Facebook, which she’d only started actively using in the past few months after posting about her own missing cat called Little Man.

She spent a week driving back and forth between Shepparton and Rushworth to help look for Molly.

With her own cat missing, she knew the pain of not knowing where a member of the family was, and she wanted to help.

“There’s not enough kindness in the world, so I wanted to do something kind,” Ms Somerville said.

“It doesn’t take that much time to put a flyer together, and then an hour or two of exercise dropping them off.

"I just didn’t want to give up, you know.“

They didn’t.

On the eighth day, Mr Ross was near Waranga Shores, following up a sighting. He went back to his mate’s place, where Molly had gone missing, at about 10am, only for his phone to ring.

“I’ve got a little dog here with your name on the collar,” the voice said.

He couldn’t believe it. After sprinting away from everyone she saw, Molly had eventually relented eight days into her escapade, sitting on a front verandah near Harston Rd, nearly 10km from where she was last seen a day earlier.

“She was skittish and running scared but she must have just decided ‘nope, I’ve had enough’,” Mr Ross said.

“When the lady rang, I said “you’re sure?” because she was just so skittish to everyone else but when we got there Molly was wrapped in a towel.

“When Molly saw me she just had the biggest smile, and it was overwhelming.”

Eight days of roughing it had taken a toll — Molly looked a bit worse for wear and was nearly 700g lighter, but thankfully still in one piece.

“Jo was still in Tassie, I had video called her earlier in the day and said there was no news, when I called her the second time I just held Molly up to the camera and she screamed,” Mr Ross said.

“It was unbelieveable.”

Molly was able to meet some of the volunteers who joined the search, and is now happy and safe and under close guard, lest she escape again.

“I was losing hope, to be honest with you,” Mr Ross said.

“We can’t thank the people of Rushworth and Murchison and around Waranga Basin enough. We’re immensely grateful.”

Ms Somerville said it was what small communities did, and it was a reminder there was still kindness in the world.

Beyond that, she said the story of Molly had captured hearts, with Facebook groups aflutter with news about where she’d gone, where she had been seen and if she was safe.

Rushworth built a connection with Molly, one which Ms Somerville felt herself.

During the search, driving to and from Shepparton, she’d occasionally pull over to the side of the road — often in darkness.

“I’d be like, ‘did I just hear a dog bark?’ I had the same thing when Little Man went missing, where I’d randomly hear a meow,” Ms Somerville said.

While she said it was never the driving force behind helping, Ms Somerville admitted she hoped helping find Molly would bring her good karma in the search for her own missing pet — who still hasn’t come home after five weeks.

She hasn’t lost hope there, either.