The rescue made him a hero. He then won the six-year-old Anatolia Pyrenean, Buford, a dinner for the hero.

“He got two pounds of ribeye last night,” Buford owner Scotty Dunton said Wednesday. “He’s just a cool, cool dog.”

The Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office earned food Tuesday morning after wandering around the house with a two-year-old boy who disappeared from his home in Seligman, Arizona the day before.

The state’s remote Dunton ranch, about 100 miles south of Grand Canyon National Park, is seven miles from the boy’s home, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

The Sheriff’s Office posted details of the disappearance Monday at 11:08pm. As of 8:20am on Tuesday, the sheriff’s office said the toddler had been found and was safe.

Danton said he learned about the missing boy that morning. His age, outside temperature – it was in his 40s – and the rough terrain combination that made Danton worried that the toddler was not alive. The area surrounding his ranch is “all the large, thick trees, mountains, canyons and rocks.” “It’s not really friendly to a two-year-old.”

In a post that announced the boy had been found, the sheriff’s office said the helicopters involved in the search had found two mountain lions in the area.

Still, Danton said he saw Buford walking down the driveway when he reached his pickup to drive to town that morning. He recalled a little boy with blonde hair, pajama pants and a tank top.

It was around 7:30am

“I knew it was him,” Danton said. “He was all confused and crying, and I ran out and grabbed him, saying, ‘You’re fine, you’re fine,’ and took him inside and got him some water and food. ”

“He calmed down pretty quickly and turned 2,” Danton said.

When he asked the boy if he had been walking all night, Danton said, the boy replied “No.”

“He kept saying, ‘Tree, tree,'” Danton recalled. “So I said, ‘Did you lie under a tree?” And he said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, “Did my dog ​​find you?” And he said, “Yes.”

The boy was not injured, Danton said, and despite him getting him a blanket, the boy didn’t want it.

“I said, ‘You’re the toughest two-year-old I’ve ever seen,'” he said. “There’s someone who says, ‘There’s no way he made it that far, and there’s something suspicious about this story.’ And, like, I went physically and found his little foot truck. ”

“He walked that way,” Danton added.

He said the Anatolia Pyrenees are essentially guard dogs, and Buford usually sleeps all day, patrolling the ranch at night to keep coyotes away.

Danton wasn’t sure if the dog found him hearing the boy crying, but he followed the child’s footsteps a mile. He said Buford was with him the whole time.