1/3 Mandy has been looking for dog Binky for days
What started as a pleasant New Year’s Eve ended in a nightmare for 37-year-old Mandy Vos and her 3-year-old son from Den Bosch. Binky, her deceased husband’s 9-year-old dog, turned out to have run away due to fireworks. A search until the early morning turned up nothing and Binky did not return the next day. Team Dog Tracking Netherlands helps the family with drones and flyers to find the dog. “You wonder if he has anything to eat and drink.”
Unsuspectingly, Mandy was celebrating New Year’s Eve with her friends and family on Tuesday evening. “It was a lot of fun. The children were playing and Binky didn’t seem scared at all at first, because he was distracted by the visitors,” Mandy reflects.
Until a friend asked her around half past eleven where the dog had gone. “Then we looked around the place, in the attic and in all the cupboards. We couldn’t find Binky anywhere. But he couldn’t be far away, I thought.”
“Scared by fireworks.”
According to Mandy, it is not for Binky to run away. “That’s why we think someone accidentally left the door open and was so shocked by the fireworks that he ran away.”
The party atmosphere was over immediately and Mandy searched for the dog with her friends until early in the morning. Without success. She decided to call the animal ambulance and the police, but Binky did not return home even on New Year’s Day.
“It’s terrible that we have been in uncertainty for days. I can’t sleep. You constantly wonder whether he is walking through the rain and the wind and whether he has food and drink.”
Mandy’s 3-year-old son is also very upset now that their dog is gone. “He is very attached to Binky. He wakes up with him and goes to bed with him. Every night he stands at the door crying, calling for Binky to come back, because he misses him very much,” says Mandy.
“The last thing we had of my husband.”
The disappearance comes after an already difficult period for the family. “My other dog died in November and my husband died in December 2023. Binky was his dog, so he was the last thing we had of my husband.”
Mandy also contacted Team Dog Detection Netherlands (THON). They arranged flyers to get the dog back. “And the National Drone Team is searching for Binky with drones at the Noorderplas,” says Tonnie Elands, coordinator at THON.
The search team is extra busy around New Year’s Eve with missing dogs. “We normally look for five or six missing dogs a week. Around New Year’s Eve that number is three times as high.”
“It’s not fireworks anymore.”
According to the coordinator, this has to do with the heavy fireworks that are set off. “They are no longer fireworks. They are big bombs that bother the dogs,” says Elands.
Mandy hopes that people will look forward to her dog and that Binky will come home soon.
DOG ZIVAH WAS ALSO MISSING DUE TO FIREWORKS:
Zivah left without a trace for hours due to fireworks: ‘startled and tore himself away’