Two things to add: see if there’s a local Basset rescue league in your area and give them a call. They may have been contacted by the original owner.
Second, someone mentioned checking newspaper classifieds, but also check out some of the Internet lost dog sites. Findtoto is one, but there are others. Google to find them, especially ones that may be in the area.
I know the lost dog thing from both sides of the equation. Had a Lab St Bernard mix as a kid who broke a leash being walked as a thunderstorm rolled in. Three days of agony and heartbreak until we found her, courtesy of the person whose yard she had wandered and collapsed into muddy and exhausted, some 15 miles away.
My current dog is a Beagle who was picked up off the street in Charlottesville muddy and starving, by a Beagle rescue league. Wonderful family dog, probably the sweetest and most tolerant disposition of all the other dogs (Labs and Lab mixes) that have blessed my life. She was clearly someone elses dog first, but whether she was abandoned or simply went off on a scent we’ll never know. What I do know is that in the five years or so we’ve had her she’s managed to get loose three times, taking off single mindedly after scents and a real pain to run down. She can move a heck of a lot faster on her four little legs than I can on my longer two.
We have a fenced in quarter acre back yard, but have chipmunks, squirrels, cats, racoons, possums and even a rather exhuberant high jumping deer that make it through, or over, the perimeter. Everytime she goes out it’s a half hour rapidly running around with her nose to the ground oblivious to everthing else around her. So it wouldn’t surprise me if she did run off from a caring owner and made it too far away to be found. But we know the rescue league did good due diligence in trying to find them before giving her to us, and we’re very glad and fortunate to have her.
bttt