Lost and found: A dog's tale

Here's quite a tale.

A Selden woman who thought her family's elderly Yorkie was gone forever made the click of a lifetime last week when she found the beloved canine showcased on a doggy rescue website.

The 52-year-old dog owner, Kate Nolan, was reunited Wednesday with 14-year-old Max whose loss devastated her and her children.

The tail, er, tale begins in November, when Max got loose from the family's Adirondack Drive home. When the family realized what had happened, the dog was gone - they feared, forever.

"We didn't think that we'd ever, ever know in this lifetime what happened to him," Nolan said Saturday.

Fast forward two months.

An organization called Yorkie911 Rescue Inc. said it was asked by the Brookhaven Town animal shelter to help care for an apparently stray, elderly dog. The group specializes in dogs less than 15 pounds that have trouble staying in shelters because of their size, said the group's Heidi Walker.

Walker helped place the dog with Linda McNally of Huntington, a doggy foster mother. Not knowing the dog's real name - or if he even had one - the rescue group renamed the dog Van Gogh because one of the deaf dog's ears was deformed.

Coincidentally, a college friend of Nolan's daughter wanted to adopt a dog; Nolan suggested checking out dog rescue websites. When the friend made a pick, Nolan went to yorkie911rescue.com herself to check out the choice.

"I guess I wanted to torture myself and look . . . because we decided there would never be another Max, we would never get a replacement," Nolan said.

Nolan made a startling discovery on Tuesday: Max was on the site for adoption.

"I looked at it and said, 'This has got to be my dog!' " she said.

On Wednesday, they all happily reunited at McNally's home.

"It was a tearful, emotional reunion," McNally said.

Nolan said she can rest easy now that her beloved Max is back home. The family is nursing Max back to his original weight.

"He's back with his family where he needs to be," she said, adding: "It is a miracle for a small little tiny Yorkshire terrier to make it through the winter."