Oak Harbor’s most wanted dog has been returned to her master after an extensive search by relatives.

“I got my little puppy back, I was so surprised!” said Diane Marth on Thursday, moments after the dog was returned to her at a nursing home in Edmonds, where she is recovering from an illness. “I went to the car and there was my little dog, it was so wonderful!”

Marth lives in Marysville. Her dog, Linny, was sent to Oak Harbor to stay with a relative while Marth went into the hospital in March. Unfortunately, Linny got away from the relative’s home March 21, and the search began. But it didn’t get intense until about a week ago when Marth’s cousin and her cousin’s husband, Clinton residents Janet and John Milholland, decided to devote themselves to finding Marth’s dog. “I said I’d ask around,” Janet explained. “And I said I’d do more than just a lost and found ad.”

Janet printed a stack of color posters on her computer and they plastered them all over the Oak Harbor area, as well as printing a version of the poster in the Whidbey News-Times classified pages.

“Help me, I’m lost,” stated the poster, in bold red letters. Below a picture of Marth and her dog were these words: “I got lost when my master was in the hospital. She is sick, but she misses me terribly. She loves me and she cries a lot because I’m lost. Please help me get back to here, I love her too. I’m a Pomeranian without a tail.” Linny, 6, had lost her tail when hit be a car.

Eventually a young woman saw the poster in the front window of Ennen’s supermarket and realized she had the missing dog. The woman had found the dog, walking wet and mud-caked, along the road in the Penn Cove area. She took the dog in, had it groomed, and gave it a good home, according to the Milhollands. She called the number on the poster at 7:22 Thursday morning.

“I love the dog, but I read the poster and just couldn’t keep it,” she told Janet Milholland. The couple immediately picked up the dog, paying the woman for the grooming expense and adding some reward money.

The Milhollands brought the fluffy little Linny into the News-Time office to thank the advertising staff for their help, and to express their appreciation for the many efforts in the community to help them find the dog. “The response from the community has been absolutely wonderful,” Janet said.

Now that Marth has her dog back, she intends to keep it close to home from now on. “I just love her dearly, she’s not going anywhere,” she said.