Nothing was heard of Valerie until last month, when she was spotted 15 kilometres from where she first went missing by locals. The news astonished her owners. “She never left my side. She was not a very outside, rough-and-tough dog,” Gardner told The Guardian. “To think that she even went one night outside in the rain, oh my gosh. To think that she’s gone a year and a half is incredible.” Experts believe that Valerie has been subsisting on a diet of roadkill, birds, frogs and mice and drinking water from a local dam.