After Canceling Honeymoon, Bergen County Couple Finds Missing Dog Near Hoboken: Here's How

HOBOKEN, NJ — Four days after a Ridgewood couple's dog sitter lost their precious pooch in Hoboken — and they postponed their honeymoon to search for him — they found him in some woods between Hoboken and Jersey City, they said.

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Now pet owners Luba, 34, and Ira, 38, are trying to get back to their normal routine, but they haven't had a chance to talk about planning another honeymoon.

"It was absolutely surreal and I keep asking my husband if we really found him or whether it was a dream," Luba said Friday.

The saga began a week ago Sunday, as the couple was preparing to head on their honeymoon to Tahiti the next morning. Their Jersey City-based dog sitter contacted them to tell them she had lost their 1-year-old pet, Presley, near the Hoboken light rail tracks, at the base of the Palisade hills leading up to Jersey City Heights.

"We look for him 18 hours a day, and our friends and my parents have been helping," Luba told Patch last Tuesday. "We do not live around here, but the sitter does. We need to find this terrified and starving boy."

She said the sitter told her that Presley had escaped from his harness, but Luba had never seen that kind of behavior from him before.

The couple, along with friends, frantically taped posters throughout Hoboken and Jersey City.

The case evoked a similar one earlier this year in which a Jersey City man was frantic after his pet sitter first claimed she lost his dog, then stopped responding to messages. That search ended in tragedy and pet owner was furious, saying pet-sitting apps needed to better screen the sitters. READ MORE: Vigil Held In Hoboken For Mac The Jersey City Dog

Luba, when shown a photo of that dog sitter last week, said she wasn't the same woman.

So how did the couple find Presley?

Into The Woods

On Wednesday, while searching near the wooded Palisade hills in Jersey City Heights, the pair got a lead.

"Wednesday late morning, I was showing flyers to some people," Luba explained, "when a man happened to be walking his dog past me and noticed the flyer and immediately recognized Presley and told me that he saw him about a mile away crying by himself."

The man had seen the dog on the cliffs near Christ Hospital in Jersey City, overlooking Hoboken.

"He was on a cliff that was unwalkable, with thorns and trees, where it was completely impossible to get around by foot," Luba said. "This made sense why nobody had any sightings of him, because he was trapped in that area. So my husband and I ran a mile to where the guy was talking about."

She added, "My husband jumped over the rock wall onto the cliff walked around everywhere and Presley recognized him and walked up to him right away."

She said, "We completely fell apart and took him to the [animal] hospital immediately. His paw was cut up and needs to heal, but he was completely healthy otherwise. If that man hadn’t been
walking by at the exact moment that Presley was crying and at the exact moment that I was showing the flyers, nobody would have never found him there. This is going to be the most memorable Thanksgiving of all time!"

She is now wondering who the man was.

"We are eternally grateful to that man, but didn’t get any of his information before he left," she said. "If he’s reading this, you saved his life and ours."

Luba got help and words of support from social media groups like Hoboken Dogwalkers, and had reached out to police in Hoboken and Jersey City.

"I’m very very struck by how kind all the Samaritans were," she said. "The empathy and beautiful words are very overwhelming. Everyone online, every shop owner, every police officer in Hoboken and Jersey City truly responded with heart, and we will never ever forget that kindness. If anyone sees the hundreds of flyers in town, it would help us a lot if people helped to take them down."

But what about the honeymoon to Tahiti?

"We have not gotten a chance to talk about when we can take the honeymoon," she said. "That reality is starting to set in — the amount of preparation that went into that, taking off of work, and timing everything for the trip just so all being a waste is very hard to stomach. We now have to work on getting refunded for everything and hoping they make an exception."

She noted, "Also, it’s now so anxiety provoking to think of leaving him and going across the world. That anxiety within is now something we’re going to have to address as well. There’s a good deal of fallout that unfortunately doesn’t end with him being found, but for now we’re just overjoyed to be able to hold and squeeze him and get him back to a healthy place!"

Luba also said she and her husband advise people to check references carefully when hiring a dog sitter. They found theirs from a sitter website for children, dogs, and others.

What should you do if your dog is missing? Act immediately. Here's a story about another North Jersey lost dog saga with advice from a Central Jersey pet group: Jersey City Woman Finally Gets Son's Dog Back After Pleading

People have also hired trackers to trace a dog's scent, and offered a reward. You can also post your missing pet's photo immediately on your local Patch (or post any other missing item) for free. Get directions at this link.

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