Boys Searching For Their Missing Best Friend

SPOKANE – A special pair of boys needs the community’s help to find their special friend who disappeared last Monday in the West Central neighborhood near Cannon Park.

“Max is gone and I don’t know where he is,” Luke’s mom Lisa Bickham said.

Max is a trained, certified therapy dog and spent years working in schools for the disabled. Max has been living and working with Luke and his little brother Josh.

Luke has autism, and Max has been there to help him but it’s Josh that has really needed Max’s help. Josh, you see, has Down’s Syndrome. The family got the therapy dog just six months ago and back then Josh would rarely communicate, had leg braces and struggled to function…

But when Max arrived things started to change.

“Go up to the fridge and point up there and go gog, gog … want to feed him dog bones,” Lisa said.

For the first time Josh was learning and making progress.

“It was so cool that they just really bonded with each other,” Lisa said.

Max slept with Josh, played with Josh and protected Josh.

“I could put him out in the yard with Max and I could go to the bathroom or get chips and know he’d be OK,” Lisa said.

Max was Josh’s therapy.

“I don’t know how Max did it really, somehow he was trained. I don’t know, they just clicked,” Lisa said.

But then on Monday while out on a walk Max took off to chase a cat and now he’s gone.

The family has looked, put up fliers, knocked on doors but Max is nowhere to be found.

There’s no denying the two boys miss him, and Luke and Josh won’t give up searching until they find their friend Max.