Echo, a missing service dog who helped a boy with autism, was found safely and returned to the boy’s family in Rye, New York, according to reports.
ABC and NBC said the dog was found safe on Friday and returned.
Echo, a black Labrador, went missing a week ago.
“She’s changed our life. She’s not a pet, she’s a critical care giver for our son. She keeps him safe,” Emily Fontana, the dog’s owner, told the ABC earlier this week.
The family offered a reward of $5,000.
The dog was bought for Fontana’s son, Mark.
“Mark doesn’t speak. He doesn’t communicate that way. Sometimes he just ends up running — to the street, to water,” Fontana told the New York Daily News. “But he can communicate, and he just needs the keys to unlock it. Echo was one of those important keys.”
She added: “So to come this far and have such a bright light in our family, we just keep thinking that it can’t end like this.”
