You little Rippa: Beloved dog makes miraculous return

A beloved pooch who ran away in a storm more than two months ago has been returned to her overjoyed owners.

But devastatingly, it seems she was terribly mistreated by someone while she was missing.

Rippa was spooked in storms before Christmas and ran away from her Bannerton home, and hadn’t been seen since.

Until this week, when Jade, Rippa’s owner, received a call from a ranger saying she’d had been found, tied to a fence about 40km outside town.

But Rippa was in bad shape.

“Half her jaw is literally hanging off,” Jade told Neil Mitchell.

“It looked like she’d been beaten because there was a fair amount of blood.

“They (the vets) said it looks like she’s been shot because there’s a lot of bone fragments missing.

“She’s in hideous pain.”

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The vet has told Jade half Rippa’s jaw will need to be surgically removed.

But in another disappointing blow, Jade has since found out that her RSPCA pet insurance won’t cover operation.

You can donate to Rippa’s recovery fund here.