It was the day the dog, the puppy, came home. Summer, the Cocker Spaniel, was weak, lame and hungry after a week in the bush evading searchers. It was like scenes from ‘The Incredible Journey'.

There was wailing, tears and eight-month-old Summer was safe. 'Starving, of course,” says breeder Carolyn Hogg, 'so I was up every two hours overnight feeding her small amounts.”

It's a storybook outcome to a distressing week for Carolyn, her daughter Zoe and a puppy. But it's also a story about people, many of them complete strangers, affected by a family's anxiety, the need to find a puppy and to get it safely home.

'It was the most amazing thing about this whole week,” says Carolyn. 'Whenever I started to lose hope, someone, and often a complete stranger would txt or stop me and offer words of encouragement. It kept me going.”

The story of collaboration, of people pulling together, began two weeks ago. Summer belongs to Carolyn's daughter Ruby. But it was her sister Zoe who took Summer to a dog show at Waipuna Park, Welcome Bay. The dog got a fright, got loose and took off into wetlands.

The next day Carolyn is on Facebook and inviting people to go for a walk to look for Summer. 'She is shy so may not come to you,” Carolyn warns. They do. Complete strangers. 'Please keep looking,” implores Carolyn.

There are sightings over the next couple of days, first thing in the morning. So Carolyn invites locals to join an hour-long stake-out 'to flush Summer from hiding.” Again people turn out in numbers to help, to support. There's a posse but they are unsuccessful.

'Thanks James, Laura and Tegan for your help,” posts Carolyn. People are touched and responsive to the predicament of the Hogg family.

'But I'm feeling pretty down,” Carolyn says on Facebook after five days of fruitless return trips from their home in Rotorua. 'However you [Facebook] and Welcome Bay people are amazing.”

The next day Carolyn and Zoe are overwhelmed by two further spontaneous acts of kindness and compassion. Sheena offers use of a campervan so the Hoggs can stay over. And yet another couple, Patrixa and Lee, who live nearby, offer them somewhere to park up.

'These people don't know us from Adam yet they continue to support us in any way possible,” says Carolyn.

Despite that support hope is ebbing. She posts on Facebook that 'sightings are infrequent. And whenever Summer is spotted she runs and hides.”

The hardest part for Carolyn was calling it quits each day. 'But then we would discuss all the messages of support from kind people and that recharged me like nothing else could.”

Six days after Summer did a frightened runner at the show she is spotted in a gully. The searchers play a waiting game, then try to head her off so she doesn't run into the scrub again. It doesn't work. 'We were both excited and devastated to be so close and yet so far,” say Carolyn.

Then as they were walking the bush line one of the searchers thinks she can hear movement.

'My superhero, who I thought had to be crazy, pushed his way through spiky bushes to where the sound was coming from. And there she was. Just 3m away.”

That superhero is Phil, Carolyn's husband. 'I was lucky enough to marry my superhero.”

Carolyn joined Phil and tempted Summer with some food. 'Slowly she seemed to recognise me and hesitantly come to me. It was the moment we had hoped for. We had her!”

Up goes a new post. 'Summer is home”. Sad, sorry, sore and hungry, but a much-loved little dog home safely and now mending.

And there's a Rotorua family flabbergasted and humbled by the goodwill of people on the other side of the Kaimais.

'There seemed to be hundreds of Tauranga people in the park looking for Summer,” says Carolyn. 'I have tried to txt, email and FB post everyone. Please accept this as my family's huge thank you. You made a difference.”

Tonight Ruby and Summer are back on the couch and cuddled up. All is well.