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Storms and tornadoes swept Mississippi on a recent evening. While many hunkered down inside, Lesley Gilliam and her family spent hours walking in the woods searching for Finnley, a 3-year-old Goldendoodle.
Finnley ran away when Gilliam, a Madison resident, got in a car crash in Collins traveling home from a family Christmas celebration.
Over the next week, the small town banded together to find the lost pup.
The night of the accident
Gilliam set off for Madison from Hattiesburg on the afternoon of Dec. 28, 2024, hoping to beat the bad weather. Her three dogs, Finnley, Cooper and Maisy rode with her. Gilliam’s husband, Michael Gilliam, had stayed for a while longer at the family gathering.
Driving north on Highway 49 shortly before 5 p.m., Gilliam drove through an intersection in Collins. Gilliam had the green light but then collided with another driver coming through from the side, sending the other car spinning.
The two cars were totaled. Gilliam, the other driver and all three dogs were fortunately left with only a few bruises and frayed nerves. The police and some locals who saw the crash arrived at the scene under the fading sun. A light mist had begun, and the streets were already wet.
Gilliam let Cooper and Maisy out. Finnley, still shaken, didn’t want to move, so Gilliam pulled all 80 pounds of him out of the car.
A bystander offered to hold Finnley’s leash while Gilliam got her license out. Spooked by the flashing police lights and sirens, the 80-pound dog broke free, leash and all, pulling the bystander to the ground. Finnley darted across six lanes of highway, up a hill and into thick woods before anyone could catch him.
Gilliam walked up to the nearby Popeyes to wait for her family. Her daughter and son-in-law, Alicia and Michael Fairley, her 10-year-old granddaughter, Ryleigh Fairley and Gilliam’s husband drove in from Hattiesburg.
The search began. Gilliam and her family drove around the Collins streets calling Finnley’s name, getting out to look through nearby yards and woods.
“We were just strangers walking through people’s yards, hollering for a dog in the middle of the night,” Gilliam said. “I didn’t know a soul in Collins.”
However, after a couple of hours with no Finnley sightings and a line of thunderstorms and tornado watches on the way, the family decided to call it. Gilliam drove back to Madison with Cooper and Maisy.
A week of searching
The seven days following the car crash saw a non-stop search marked by Finnley sightings from Collins residents pinging nearly daily on Gilliam’s phone.
The night of the crash, Gilliam and her family went door to door asking locals to keep an eye out for Finnley. Word spread through texting and Facebook posts, and soon a network formed of people joining the search.
After the Covington County Sheriff’s Department shared the situation on Facebook at Gilliam’s request, the search party grew. Collins has a population just over 2,000. The post was shared nearly 1,000 times, even making its way outside of the state. Residents in the nearby cities of Laurel and Seminary joined in.
Gilliam spent countless hours driving back to Collins to search. She walked through the woods with volunteers, placing her clothes in various spots to lure Finnley to a familiar scent.
“My dirty laundry was all over Collins,” Gilliam joked.
Local shop and restaurant owners put out food and water for Finnley. Wanda and Thomas Brooks, who live on a large plot of extended family land near the crash site called Baker’s Hill, put out a heated blanket. Gilliam said a Collins resident told her that she and her two kids took treats on their daily walks and called for Finnley just in case he was nearby.
Days passed, temperatures continued to drop, and Gilliam rang in the New Year worrying the fireworks would scare Finnley, driving him further away.
All the while, Gilliam received intermittent texts messages from Collins residents who said they spotted Finnley. He never came to anyone calling his name and ran away as soon as someone approached, but the residents assured Gilliam that Finnley looked uninjured.
“Facebook was like a full-time job just keeping up with the sightings,” Gilliam said.
On New Year’s morning, a Collins resident was out hunting when he spotted Finnley and his bright red collar through the scope of his gun. Another resident saw Finnley eating from his deer feed stands.
On Friday, January 3, nearly one week after Finnley ran away, Gilliam was signing paperwork for a car to replace the one totaled. She got a call from a woman who saw Finnley in the Catfish One parking lot.
Still sitting in the car dealership, Gilliam called Finnley’s name while the woman held up the phone on speaker. Finnley ran once again into the woods.
Collins is an hour-and-a-half drive from Madison, so these texts and Facebook messages simultaneously sparked hope and stress. If Gilliam set off for Collins the moment she heard of a sighting, Finnley would be gone by the time she got there.
However, these sightings did tell Gilliam that Finnley was mostly staying around Baker’s Hill.
Lost and found
The following Saturday morning, Gilliam drove up in her new car to search once again, worn by the long search and worried about the impending frost predicted for the next week.
She and a large volunteer group set off in different directions through the Baker’s Hill woods. Around noon, Gilliam received another text. Someone had spotted Finnley in an abandoned barn. Gilliam quickly made her way over to see for herself.
When she got to the barn, several people had already gathered, including her husband Michael, having seen the same text in a group chat. By the time she got there, Finnley, recognizing Michael, had come out of the barn. Finally reunited, Finnley was just as excited to see Gilliam and her husband.
“I was on the ground, rolling around with him, and he’s like, ‘Where y’all been?'” Gilliam said.
Finnley’s leash had broken off at the clasp, and his skin was scratched from brambles. His fur was covered in ticks, already dead from his regular treatment. But, overall, he looked healthy and well fed.
Wanda told Gilliam she had seen Finnley following an unnamed barn cat that lives on Baker’s Hill. Finnley loves cats, Gilliam said, and she and her husband even recently adopted another cat as a playmate (the cat, Jasmine, has yet to warm up to the 80-pound Goldendoodle.)
Gilliam believes Finnley spent those seven nights sleeping in the barn next to his new friend. During the search, Gilliam had found two sets of muddy pawprints on Baker’s Hill, one large set walking side by side with a smaller set.
Finnley’s daily routine includes playing endless fetch, day or night, with anyone willing to throw the ball. When Gilliam and her husband returned home with Finnley, the first thing they did was play fetch in the backyard.
A week marked by anxiety and searching was over. Gilliam said she had thought of every single possibility during that week and at one point accepted she would never see Finnley again.
Gilliam said it didn’t take long for Finnley to settle into daily life again. He doesn’t have any storm anxiety, although he is a little more nervous about car rides. He’s happy to be back with his parents and pet siblings — Cooper, Jasmine, another cat named Sambo and a 22-year-old McCaw named Azure. Unfortunately, during the week of searching, Maisy, the third pup in the car during the crash, passed away from old age.
Finnley is back to his normal routine, playing fetch, eating cheese cubes and insisting he’s a lap dog when he sits on the couch with Gilliam and her husband. He has a new collar, this time with a GPS tracker built in.
Two months after that fateful car crash, Gilliam said she is still blown away by the support she received from local residents.
“You know, you’re in a traumatic wreck to begin with, and then you lose your dog on top of that, and you’re an hour and a half away (from home),” Gilliam said. “You can’t be there when you want to be there all the time. (The Collins residents) were so helpful and so supportive and they were the real reason why I think we got him back.”
Got a news tip? Contact Mary Boyte at mboyte@jackson.gannett.com
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