So near yet still so far...

Well, we think we made progress, but sadly we still don't have Sky safe and sound at home.
We all met as planned, had a strategy meeting, and planned to cover 3 copses, most of us on foot and a few "Meerkats" in cars and upstairs windows (Pete & Bren - by the way just biscuits gone last night at their place - I'm off to check the footage shortly).
Michelle, the Blaby dog warden, has set up a CCTV in a house overlooking the Lount (thanks to Jane who lives there with her 7 collies) and at 4pm Saturday a dark dog or larger than dog sized thing came out from the brook into the field and went back under cover. That was all she could find over a 4 day period. She showed us the photo. Could it be??
So off we set.
We were armed with mobile phones and a few walkie talkies, and Tim was "HQ on legs". Thank you so much to everyone who helped, especially Vivienne who had heard of our blog via postings on other sites, discovered she lives very hear, and asked if she could join us. So from 10.45 this is how it went:
Copse no.1 revealed a fox, who scarpered. Squiggly the trained retriever gun dog was having a great time running through mud and thick undergrowth. Ziggy the spaniel joined in.
Copse no.2 revealed another fox and a muntjac deer.
We regrouped at the bottom of the infamous Green Lane and went up to Copse no.3. This is thick, quite large, has a nice lake, plenty of cosy den areas and is only 50m from the Green Lane, in the area of all the sightings. Dog walkers don't usually go this route yet we saw lots of pawprints in the mud and 2 dog poos.
As we were 2/3 along Ffion looked back to the Green L to check that Rachel and Gail had eyes trained on us and saw the silhouette of a labrador sized dog with flappy labradory ears running on the brow of the hill where the GL sits in a dip between high hedges. Initially Bird Brain Ffion thought "oh look there's a dog going up the lane" then 2 seconds later went "duhhhh!!!!!" and to cut a long story short we missed it. Sam, aged 12, with Ffion, also saw it so it's not just her hallucinating. No-one was seen walking a dog till 20 mins later. Fresh prints in the on the lane looked like the right sized dog, clearly running, doing a rapid U-turn just below where Rachel and Gail were about to arrive and going backwards, in the dip of the lane. A random car drove up and had seen nothing, but from where Ffion and Sam saw him he'd have been on the other side of the hedge at that point. Bren saw a fox scarper through her binoculars.
We never accounted for this dog, and the lay of the land was such that it could have run from the copse, along a ditch where Tim and I couldn't see, arriving at exactly the point he was seen last Monday, and following the same route. There are a lot of ditches and hedges around!!
As no-one had seen him going off in another direction we went back and did the copse again in case he'd returned, but nothing there.
We covered another nearby copse just in case, but no luck.
We were tired and hungry by then and retreated Chez Coats for pizzas.
Part of us is going AAAAAAAAAAAARRRGGHHHHHHH!! Perhaps more of us would have had him surrounded and we should have had a bigger team?
Part of us thinks - this must be him and he must have this copse as his no.1 spot. It's as far away from people and traffic as you can get, with plenty of cover. Knowing this is MAJOR progress.
So many thoughts were postulated over pizza, too many to float here (but if there's anyone reading this who's been in this situation please do call us on the numbers at the top of the blog to give us your experience). The upshot of which are:
We will try tinkling the dog biscuit in his metal bowl, hoping this is hardwired in his head, then leaving the bowl under natural cover and walking away. Do this for a few days at the same time of day and see what happens.
Install the CCTV in a house overlooking this copse - there are 4 or 5 houses, all know about Sky, and I am just off to see if one of them doesn't mind. We think there's a section down in a dip that won't be visible but who's to say he always goes in a straight line.
Consider lying there in an evening one night next week in sleeping bags, just me and Tim, very quiet, to see if he'll pick up our scent and come to us.
We need patience at this stage and need to remind ourselves that the weather is better, he's surviving fine, and best not to rush it after 4 months of hoping to get to this point, and risk scaring him away.
Ffion is not known for her patience, but is 42 next week and agrees that she's old enough, that she should try harder!