Thanks to some friendly motorists, a tenacious dog lover and a tiny microchip, Lacie the chihuahua is going home.

The tiny dog is now safely ensconced in the house of Jackie Gay, but on the night of June 26, things were not looking so good for the 13-pound ball of blond fur.

That night, Lacie was riding down the Alaska Highway with her family, which included three other chihuahuas, a miniature poodle named Fancy Pants, her mistress Becky and Becky's nephew Anthony.

Driving ahead of them in the camper was Scott Jacobs, Anthony's dad. The whole family was on the move from Anchorage to their new home in South Dakota.

It was just after 10 p.m. and the caravan had passed Swift River as they moved south on the Alaska Highway.

Anthony was at the wheel when his front tire slipped onto the gravel shoulder. He tried to correct but the car got away from him.

The back end fishtailed, then swung around so the car was facing backward and moving sideways. As soon as the tires hit the edge of the pavement, the vehicle flipped.

"It must have rolled three times," Jacobs recalled. Fancy Pants was ejected from the vehicle and killed. Lacie too was either thrown during the crash or escaped once the car came to a stop - either way, she was gone.

But the family had their hands full. Becky's right hand and arm had been crushed, and her left hand was in bad shape too.

Anthony's elbow was a mess of blood and torn skin. A passing transport truck radioed for help and by 11 p.m., aunt and nephew were being rushed back to Watson Lake for treatment. From there, they were medevaced to Seattle via Juneau.

Scott stayed behind to look for Lacie.

"I spent a couple of hours looking for her," he told the Star yesterday.

"Some people in a camper said they had seen a little dog in a gravel pit a ways from the accident, but she wasn't there. I was hoping she'd come back to the scene once all the noise was gone - she didn't.

"It almost broke my heart to leave without finding her."

He left with a faint hope that someone would find Lacie before something did.

The next morning, a couple travelling south by motorcycle spotted an out-of-place member of the animal kingdom trotting along the side of the highway.

A long-haired chihuahua not being the most common sight on a lonely stretch of northern road, the motorcyclists stopped and picked her up. They flagged down a camper headed back toward Whitehorse and asked the occupants to please deliver the little dog to the Mae Bachur Animal Shelter.

There, she was put under the care of Jackie Gay, an employee at the shelter.

"I don't know how this little, slightly overweight chihuahua survived out there," Gay said of Lacie's night in the bush. "I looked at her foot pads and it doesn't look like she's ever been outside, let alone lost in the Yukon."

With no room available at the shelter, Gay set about finding a foster home for Lacie while she tried to locate the dog's owner. But the chubby chihuahua was badly shaken from her ordeal - Gay decided to take the dog home with her rather than send her to yet another caretaker.

"She didn't eat for a couple days," Gay said. "When she finally did, it was roast beef and potatoes, with a little bit of gravy."

Within days, Gay had found Lacie's family thanks to a quarter-inch microchip planted in the dog's neck ruff.

Every shelter and veterinary clinic in North America has a microchip scanner, she explained, which will bring up a company code and an animal ID number when it detects a chip. Gay called the company, Home Again; which in turn called the vet in Anchorage, who called Becky.

"I literally jumped out of my chair when they called me," Gay said. "I got on the phone with (Becky) and she started crying and I started crying."

Then began the arduous task of getting Lacie down to the Southern 48.

No airline will take an unaccompanied animal on a transfer flight, Gay soon learned. Nor will they permit animals to fly cargo if the mercury rises about 25 degrees C.

But dog lovers are an entrepreneurial bunch, and Gay found a Vancouver company called World Wide Animal Travel which specializes in chaperoning animals from flight to flight when their owners cannot.

The only thing standing in Lacie's way now is the weather, but Gay is happy to have her furry house guest until the temperature drops.

"She's a really sweet little dog," Gay said. "She obviously comes from a very loving home."