IT was a tale with a happy ending when Tilly, the much loved Westie, was reunited with her owners after three years.

The West Highland terrier went missing from grandmother Liz Field’s securely fenced garden in Monkton Park, Chippenham, in June 2012.

She launched a long and desperate search for her precious pet, distributing hundreds flyers and posters across town.

After several weeks of searching in vain, Mrs Field, who has had a dog for most of her 70 years, vowed never to get another, saying she could not bear to deal with such pain again.

But last week, out of the blue, she received a phonecall to say Tilly had turned up 70 miles away in Stadhampton in Oxfordshire.

Now Tilly, four-and-a-half, is safely home being spoiled by her dumbstruck owner.

Mrs Field said: “She almost disappeared off the face of the Earth, no trace of her, and then suddenly after two years nine months, a call. Truly I just couldn’t believe it, I had absolutely given up hope. I had to put thoughts of her out of my head, I couldn’t face it.”

She and her granddaughter Charlotte, who was seven when Tilly went missing, fell in love with her the moment they laid eyes on her at a rehoming centre in Swindon.

“Charlotte absolutely adored her,” said Mrs Field. “She was the dog’s mummy.

“We left it three weeks and told her she’d been run over. Rightly or wrongly, she wouldn’t have stopped worrying if she thought Tilly was somewhere hungry or hurt.”

On being reunited at last, Tilly recognised her owner straight away, and Charlotte cried with happiness.

“She looked like a little ragamuffin,” said Mrs Field. “They do all look the same but just something about her little face, I knew it was definitely Tilly. She came running up, so loveable, just the same.

“Charlotte was running around the house screeching, completely overwhelmed.”

Tilly’s left ear is now permanently down but apart from that she has been given a clean bill of health.

Mrs Field believes Tilly may have been stolen to breed from and later dumped on discovery she has been spayed.

Iain Atkin, manager of The Oxfordshire Animal Sanctuary who found Tilly running up and down a road, said: “It is a wonderful story. It would not have been possible to reunite them if Tilly had not been microchipped; without that, there would have been no way of contacting the owner.”