Isabella Plains couple Shea Marshall and Brendan McCausland celebrate after pet dog Ketu found

They were reunited with their beloved dog Ketu who was missing for three weeks and sparked a huge community effort to find her, Shea is due to give birth to their first child on Friday and Brendan's birthday is next Sunday.

To say they have been on an emotional rollercoaster is an understatement.

It all started on Tuesday, September 27 when Ketu, their two-year-old Tibetan Mastiff, escaped from the Kambah backyard of Brendan's parents.

"She'd chewed a hole in the fence from what we thought was anxiety," Shea said.

"And then someone said they'd seen her at 2.30pm that afternoon at the Kambah woolshed.

"We just scoured, for hours and hours and hours to get her. And we had people saying she was in Weston Creek and everywhere else. But we just couldn't find her or track her down."

For the next two weeks, the couple put pamphlets up everywhere, door-knocked the area and posted notices on social media looking for Ketu, but to no avail.

The large dog with the beautiful burnished brown coat had simply disappeared.

A childcare worker, Shea, who was eight months pregnant when Ketu went missing, regarded her as her "emotional support dog".

"I had to go on mat leave early because I just couldn't work, I was just constantly thinking of her," she said.

Her waters broke two weeks after Ketu went missing because she was so stressed.

Then, on Monday, Shea got a call from Domestic Animal Services. It was almost three weeks to the day since Ketu had gone missing.

"They said, 'We're pretty sure we've got your dog. We can see her collar and her tag. We're pretty certain it's her'," Shea, 26, said.

"Then they said, 'We can't grab hold of her and we're just standing here because we don't want to lose her. Can you come to us and grab her?'."

Shea and her father-in-law headed over to the house in Kambah where Ketu had randomly turned up in the yard of an elderly man who had asked his neighbour for help with the dog and the neighbour had rung Domestic Animals Services.

The house was about a kilometre from where Ketu went missing and over the other side of Drakeford Drive.

Shea said she was steeling herself for disappointment, that it wasn't Ketu.

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"My father-in-law got to her first and as soon as he saw her, he was ecstatic," Shea said.

"And then Ketu saw me and that was it. She was like, 'Mum!'. And for a dog that doesn't jump on people she jumped up and had a big lick up the side of the face. She was so happy.

"I cried like an absolute baby."

Brendan, a tractor mechanic, was at work when Ketu was found.

Shea took the Ketu straight out there and Brendan had an emotional reunion with his beloved dog.

"Shea called me and said, 'I have her, I have her' and I thought, 'There's no way'," he said.

"It had been the worst because you don't know where they are, what's happened."

Brendan, who turns 29 next Sunday, and Shea said the support of the local community had been instrumental in keeping alive their hopes they would see Ketu again.

"It was just amazing, the community response. Everyone went out of their way to help us in whatever way they could," Shea said.

"We had people out on horseback doing the ridges."

Brendan said: "People were using drones to look for her. One person offered up an infra-red camera. Everybody just came out to help us find Ketu."

"I had people messaging me, literally asking, 'What do you need me to do? Where do I need to put posters? Have you got posters?'," Shea said.

"And it's gone all over Canberra. It spread like wildfire."

The relief that Ketu had been found was felt throughout Canberra, especially in Kambah where she had gone missing and where local residents had mobilised.

"Personally, I can't thank Canberra enough, for all the effort they put in," Shea said.

"Brendan's been worrying about me and it took that weight off our shoulders because we knew someone was always looking for her, someone always had an eye out. It was really nice.

"We've managed to make friends out of it."

Ketu lost seven kilos over the three weeks she was missing.

Back home in Isabella Plains, she feasted on her favourite food, chicken drumsticks, and snoozed contentedly on her bed.

She was safe and sound.

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