She ran home, got her car and began an aimless, frantic drive in search of the dog. She called home and told her 14-year-old son to find photos of Bailey (a dog with a shaggy tan-cream coat, a chestnut beard and enormously long eyelashes) and start printing out fliers. She drove home, picked them up, walked to a nearby copy shop to make more and started posting them, crying all the while.

Image

Ms. Le Pape canceled sessions with her evening patients, citing a family emergency. All day, she wandered the tidy precincts known collectively as Brownstone Brooklyn. Up Columbia to Atlantic Avenue, down Hicks Street by the expressway, west to the factories and warehouses of Red Hook, swinging by the dog run beneath by the highway overpass.

Everywhere Ms. Le Pape went, people seemed compelled to help. They asked for an extra flier so they could post it on Facebook, or make copies and tape them up elsewhere. They offered suggestions — call vets, call shelters, call animal rescue places, go to the police.

“I went to the sanitation garage, down by the water, and the guy said, ‘I’m announcing this on roll call until they find her,’” Ms. Le Pape said. “I ran into absolute strangers who said they were going to church to pray for my dog.”

Ms. Le Pape spared no expense. For $149.95 she registered with LostMyDoggie.com, which robo-called 1,250 of her neighbors, alerting them to look out for Bailey.

She printed over a thousand fliers. Omar at the copy shop would not take her money.

In the evening, Ms. Le Pape became fixated on Brooklyn Bridge Park, a mile and a half north of her house — a quiet place to hide for a dog who hates loud noises. From 11:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m., Ms. Le Pape and her mother, who had come out from Manhattan to help, wandered the deserted park, calling the dog’s name.