Charlie, an 8-year-old Labrador in Great Falls, really misses his pal Lucy, a female mixed Lab/ Weimaraner who turns 4 on Super Bowl Sunday.

His energetic pal jumped out the window of their family’s car on a trip to Kalispell on Oct. 18.

A spayed rescue dog weighing in at 110 pounds, Lucy is black with a white diamond on her chest and sprinkling of white under her nose that looks in photos like a mustache. She has big paws, long floppy ears and a long tail she holds curled up, mimicking their cocker spaniel named Sassy.

She was wearing a blue harness with a red leash. They thought she had her tags on until they found that collar at home.

“Everything thing that could go wrong has gone wrong,” said Tim Braulick of Great Falls, the missing dog’s owner.

Braulick and his wife Amy pursued every avenue available to recover the dog, including calling the county shelter, advertising, Facebook postings and five trips back to the Flathead Valley to search for her. She was last sighted in the vicinity of Wendy’s restaurant and Glacier Boat Docks on U.S. 2 East.

Losing Lucy was another blow to the couple, who have been coping with a mental health crisis with their 15-year-old adopted daughter. The dog disappeared when they came to pick up their daughter at Pathways Treatment Center in Kalispell to transfer her to a long-term program at Shodair Hospital in Helena.

Braulick said Lucy and Charlie were in the back of their Suburban when they stopped in Columbia Falls to let the dogs run.

“We stopped because we knew we would be in Pathways doing some discharge work,” he said.

He remembered getting a phone call from a friend when he stopped the car at a light around Rose Crossing, but had no idea the apparently dog had stepped on a button and rolled down the window. Braulick suspects she spotted something tempting and bailed out the window to give chase.

When they got to the treatment facility, the couple didn’t stop to check on the dogs.

“We didn’t realize it; we were just busy because we had a six-hour window to get her (their daughter) from Kalispell to Helena,” he said. “When we came back out to put things away, I said ‘Where’s Lucy?’ We searched the grounds around Pathways.”

Under a deadline, the family didn’t have enough time to retrace their route to find Lucy. The couple returned two days later on Saturday to search but with no luck.

“We kept coming up every other weekend until finally we made a decision — we’ll leave it in God’s hands,” he said. “Then we had a phone call from a guy  who was leaving with his family to go visit someone in Columbia Falls. He had her in his sight and he tried to catch her. We had three calls that day.”

They decided to come again and stayed overnight to search, but had no luck on that early November trip. By Thanksgiving, Braulick said his wife decided the financial cost was too great to keep coming this far to locate their dog.

He said people had been reaching out to them, saying they would catch her if they could and bring her to Great Falls or meet them halfway.

“Then, after Thanksgiving, we never had any more phone calls,” he said.

Braulick is retired from Great Falls Transit while Amy still works as director of the Boys and Girls Club. The couple hopes for a call at (406) 553-0318 from someone who has seen Lucy or found her and taken her in.

They remain heartbroken over her loss. Charlie, her canine pal, remains in mourning.

“He’s been really depressed,” Braulick said. “She means a lot to all of us. It’s been really hard. It’s one of those things; you get so attached to an animal. She’s just such a good-natured character. She just loves everyone.”

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.