TORONTO

For Bear – a young rescue dog from Greece – it was his Instagram account, a handful of neighbourhood Facebook groups, and a quick-thinking public relations student who found him, that helped reunite the missing pup with his East York family last Friday.

That day, Bear went missing in mid-afternoon from his home while a new hot water system was being installed.

The assumption is that a gate was left open, so Bear bolted.

Wayne Watson, 53, searched the house for the young dog, who joined their family last April. Panic rose, as he found each room empty.

Next, he biked around the neighbourhood, calling for Bear.

He told his wife, who posted quickly on a Facebook group intended for their small street before she began driving home.

“We were freaking out,” recalled Watson. Bear’s usual tag was not on him, as he’d recently had a ruined collar replaced.

But then: “Literally 45 minutes from when the posting went up on Facebook, we found him.”

Dana Dunn, 21, was parking her car around 3 p.m. when she noticed Bear running. He paused to look at her. She realized there was no owner nearby.

“I thought, this is sort of odd,” Dunn said.

An idea came to her: “I snapped a couple quick photos of him and I posted a post to my timeline and then to our local neighbourhood Facebook group...I said, please share this post so we can help get him home.”

Efforts to get Bear into a car to take him somewhere and check for a microchip failed. He ended up napping on Dunn’s kitchen floor.

“It was super cute,” she recalled. Meanwhile, people shared her post on Facebook, hoping to help.

Then a text message arrived, from someone who thought the dog Dunn found looked just like a dog they follow on Instagram.

Dunn looked up the account and realized the happy dog frolicking in the photos was indeed Bear.

Meanwhile, Watson’s wife had seen her Facebook post, which had Dunn’s number. Dunn’s phone rang.

“It was Bear’s mom, who was so frantic and so happy that I had found him,” Dunn said.

Turns out, Bear lived mere blocks away. Around 6 p.m., Watson and his wife pulled up in their car.

“You’re caught between thankfulness and tears that you actually got him back so quick,” Watson recalled. “We were just so thankful for Dana.”

“Just the fact that this dog had an Instagram account,” said Dunn. “Everyone I’ve told has just been howling about it. This person didn’t even know Bear, didn’t know the owners, just had followed him on Instagram, which is so funny.”

mshah@postmedia.com