Four-legged Cape York escape artist found after 230km adventure

A fun visit to Cooktown visiting relatives turned into a nightmare weekend for Chonnie McCosh when her dog, Cotton, suddenly ran away.

During the three days he was missing, Cotton managed to escape the care of various people before being found all the way in Mareeba at 2am on 13 July, giving Houdini a run for his money in four-legged form.

The ordeal began when Ms McCosh stopped near the Little Annan River bridge with her three dogs.

“He was right at my feet at the car, and I literally just unclicked his little rope, reached down to pick up the other two, because it’s a ute and they can’t jump in, reached around to pick him up and he wasn’t there,” she recalled.

“He’d run back over to the gravel pile, so I called him and went towards him and he just took off, I mean, it was like his bum caught fire.”

Ms McCosh explained Cotton was mostly deaf and partially blind, and required medication for his eyes.

“I could see him heading for the road, so I’m screaming and yelling trying to get him to stop, because he can hear a little bit,” she said.

The screaming and yelling were to no avail, with Cotton darting up a driveway just opposite the rest stop.

“By then he was three-quarters of the way up towards the gate, and I was like he’s going to have to stop at the gate, because he’s pretty much blind, so he’s not going to be able to figure it out straight away,” Ms McCosh said.

“I’m running up this steep hill but then I see the gate is open, so by the time I got to the gate, he’s vanished into the property.”

Unfortunately, the residents were not home, and Ms McCosh spent the next two-and-a-half hours driving around, sounding the horn, calling out, and attempting to coax Cotton out of the property before turning to her cousin in Cooktown for help.

After tracking down the property agent, Ms McCosh found out about Cotton’s first escape.

“He rang me back and he said ‘I’ve got really good news and really bad news’,” she said.

“He told me Cotton was there, the guy came home and Cotton was having a really good time with his dogs eating bones, but then he sprinted back down the hill to a motorhome.

“I didn’t know what direction they were going in, or if they did pick him up.”

With a little luck and help via social media, Cotton was found at the Mareeba Rodeo.

A woman who had seen Ms McCosh’s social media posts called her and sent a picture of Cotton.

“They were walking home from the pub at two in the morning on Saturday after the big rodeo street parade,” Ms McCosh said.

“They picked him up and took him home because they realised it was a lost dog, but it wasn’t until 10 o’clock the next morning that they got in touch with me.”

Unfortunately, Cotton somehow escaped again out of the locked house.

“Just as I was coming past the Mareeba airport, they rang me and they said ‘you’re not going to believe it, we got home and he’s gone,” she said.

“I literally had to pull over, I was crying that hard.”

After some door-knocking, they found that Cotton had turned up to a house two doors down and was taken to the pound, but Ms McCosh couldn’t retrieve him until Monday.

“I turned up to the pound and I was crying my eyes out,” Ms McCosh said.

“I was like he’s 16, he’s been missing for days and he’s travelled this insane amount of distance.

“They were very kind though and let me take him, I think because he had just gotten there and I was bawling my eyes out like a crazy person.”

On the way home, Ms McCosh said Cotton was traumatised and refused to eat, not even acknowledging his favourite hot chicken in the car.

“When I picked him up from the pound, I don’t think he even recognised me until about halfway home,” she said.

“He would hardly eat or drink, but once he got home and smelled the other dogs, he started wagging his tail and about half an hour later he was like ‘where’s that hot chicken, I’ll have that now.’”