A Chatham-Kent charity is trying to help after increasing reports of missing dogs following stormy weather.

The Facebook page for Lost Pets of Chatham-Kent is growing rapidly, with some help from Mother Nature.

Earlier this year, Nicole Britton's four-year-old black Lab Hurley jumped the fence and ran away from home just before a spring shower.

“It's awful, it's like missing a member of your family," says Britton. "I got phone call after phone call saying ‘you need to look at Lost Pets of Chatham-Kent. We think Hurley was found.’"

Britton checked out the Facebook page to see if it was in fact her missing dog.

“It looked like him but it didn't look like him,” she says.

It turns out, it was Hurley. He wandered almost 40 kilometres from Kent Bridge to Erie Beach.

“That was quite the trip for him," says Britton.

Lost Pets of Chatham-Kent has been reuniting missing pets with their owners, relying on vigilant group members to share missing pet pictures online.

“We've noticed that dogs tend to run more when there are storms coming or storms happening," says group founder Heather Clifford.

Just because the group is based in Chatham-Kent, doesn't always mean that wandering pets stay close to home.

“We've had dogs picked up in Tilbury ending up near Toronto,” she says. “One was found on the 401 and brought in the vehicle to be safe. They found the page and posted them there."

So far this month alone there have been 19 success stories. Many were lost because of thunderstorms, adding to the 120 pets already found since the page was launched a few years ago.

“I love seeing our success stories,” says Clifford. “They make me cry every time we have one."

Britton says Hurley's paws were bleeding bad when he was found and he is already timid around new people, making the four days he was gone feel like an eternity.

“We could tell he had been running for quite a while, trying to find his way home, but he was going in the wrong direction."

Since his return home, he hasn't jumped the fence.

“If it wasn't for Lost Pets of Chatham-Kent we would have never found Hurley."