The Vanishing Boy of Yavapai County

Here’s how the Channel 12 news in Phoenix began the story, Thursday night on the 10 o’clock news: “God sent that dog to rescue my son.”

Words spoken by the 2-year-old boy’s father, Corey Allen, outside the family’s home on the west side of rural Seligman, Arizona. Corey Allen says he was working on the roof, Sarah Allen was inside with their one-year-old. And two-year-old Bodin Allen went outside to play.

But when Bodin Allen’s mom called for him, he didn’t answer. He wasn’t there. And after an hour of frantic searching, as the sky darkened, the Allens called the Yavapai Sheriff’s Department and before long there were dozens of search-of-rescue volunteers and deputies searching the area. Helicopters with spotlights scoured the plateau, the pilots reporting two mountain lions prowling the territory. The search went on all night, and by morning the news of the missing boy had been announced by the Sheriff’s Department and broadcast by the local news, spread around by neighbors and radio and the Internet — so that a rancher named Scotty Dunton, seven long miles away in the backcountry to the west, had already heard before he got in his pickup and headed to town about 7:30 a.m. And saw his big old ranch dog, Buford the Anatolian Pyrenees, coming up the dirt driveway with a blond-headed toddler by his side. A blond-headed toddler in dirty pajamas, eyes red from crying and with a few scratches from the high-desert brush on one arm and his face, but otherwise alive and well.

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