She is also grateful for the community support they received in Hamilton and specifically the Mount Hope area. 
 
 "It was crazy, like, hundreds of people were calling and texting me to see if they could help. It was awesome." 
 
 As for the airline, Pittman says WestJet was apologetic about the mixup. 
 
 "They did what they could," she said. "Their agents were going around, same as the rest of the community. They used the resources as good as they could. Our accommodations and everything was paid for." 
 
 WestJet spokesperson Lauren Stewart said the crew was relieved to see the dog reunited with its owners. The company also paid for Cooper to be checked out by a vet before heading home. 
 
 "In the days ahead, we will review our procedures in an effort to determine what happened and make changes if needed to prevent future, similar occurrences," Stewart wrote in an email Friday. 
 
 Now, Pittman and Simon are deciding whether to fly Cooper to Newfoundland as planned, or have him stay with relatives in Mississauga during their vacation. They're also considering keeping him in a kennel back home in Halifax. 
 
 "I've got to sleep on it," Pittman said. 
 
 She's not concerned about another flight mixup, though. 
 
 "I don't think they'd do the same mistake twice," she said. "But he's so stressed and traumatized…so I'm just more worried about that." 
 
 mhayes@thespec.com 
 
 905-526-3214 | @mollyhayes 

 After a long, strange plane trip that began in Halifax and should have ended in Newfoundland, Terri Pittman has finally found her lost labradoodle Cooper — near Hamilton International Airport. 
 
 After enduring torrential rains overnight, Cooper was found wet and hungry by a group of residents early Friday. He was cold and scared, but otherwise in good condition. 
 
 Pittman, a Halifax resident who took a flight to Hamilton on Thursday after learning her dog was missing, said she was grateful for Hamilton residents' help and enthusiasm in finding her pet. 
 
 "Knowing that people were spotting him running in the same area gave me more hope," said Pittman, holding Cooper and surrounded by the people who helped track him down. 
 
 I was coming out of Timmies, and I saw it run across the parking lot, so I chased it down to where it ran down this road. - Louis Atkinson 
 
 "Thousands of people helped me. With all the [social media] shares, and people searching and calling. Random people messaged me asking how they can help, and they're out around at three, four in the morning, looking around." 
 
 Pittman started getting calls about her dog around 7:30 a.m., from neighbours near the airport who had spotted him running through their backyards. They tried to approach him, but he ran off, scared. 
 
 Louis Atkinson, who lives in the area, first spotted Cooper running across a parking lot near a Tim Hortons. 
 
 "He was running, looked scared," said Atkinson. 
 
 "I was coming out of Timmies, and I saw it run across the parking lot, so I chased it down to where it ran down this road." 
 
 Put on wrong flight 
 
 Cooper's adventure began Wednesday. 
 
 Pittman's pet was supposed to travel from Halifax to Deer Lake, N.L., to be with her family while she and her roommate headed to Jamaica for a wedding. 
 
 Instead, WestJet put Cooper on a flight bound for Hamilton. 
 
 After a night out in torrential rains, Cooper the dog has been reunited with his family. 0:42 
 
 WestJet told Pittman that Cooper arrived in Hamilton about midnight on Wednesday. Some time after, airline workers lost Cooper. 
 
 "I got a call saying they'd put my dog on the wrong flight to a totally different province," she said. The airline told her Cooper escaped from his collar when airline staff let the dog out for a potty break. 
 
 Westjet says it has offered to pay for Cooper's vet bill, and will work on getting everyone back home as soon as they are rested. 
 
 "Our primary focus was reuniting Cooper and his owner, and we are in touch with Terri to make sure he is okay," said spokesperson Lauren Stewart in an email. 
 
 Helping hands 
 
 At one point Thursday, Pittman asked WestJet over the phone to put Cooper's crate, left open and with familiar-smelling things inside, by the road so that he might return to it. The crate was there for several hours, "but someone stole it a few hours ago," she told CBC Hamilton on Thursday evening. 
 
 Pittman took a flight to Hamilton in the middle of a massive rain and thunderstorm to look for her dog, calling Thursday "one of the worst days of my life." 
 
 But soon, people in Hamilton came to help. 
 
 "The community of Mount Hope and Hamilton have been amazing," Pittman said. "Random people have messaged me saying they want to help."
– Relieved dog owner Terri Pittman has been reunited with her labradoodle after what was supposed to be a short flight turned into a nightmare that lasted days. On Wednesday, she sent Cooper to stay with relatives while she went to a wedding in Jamaica—but instead of putting the dog on its flight from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Deer Lake, Newfoundland, WestJet put the dog on the wrong flight and it ended up in Hamilton, Ontario, more than 1,000 miles away in the wrong direction, the CBC reports. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Cooper slipped his leash and ran away after airport workers in Hamilton took him outside to pee. Pittman flew to Hamilton when she found out about the mix-up and searched the fields around the airport for Cooper, joined by many local volunteers who had heard about the search on social media. After a night of torrential rains, residents spotted Cooper around a mile away from the airport, Friday morning, the Hamilton Spectator reports. In a Facebook post, Pittman says it was a "wonderful feeling" to be reunited with Cooper after two terrible days. She says she was overwhelmed by the response. "The fact that strangers I did not know or had even met ... were out looking for him at night through morning, or messaging me to see how they could help is simply amazing," she says.