AUBURN – Never let it be said that a little dog can’t run with the big ones.

For nearly a week, a tiny papillon named Max was on the run in the woods around Gracelawn Cemetery. Just over ankle high, the dog managed to find food to eat, stayed out of the way of bigger and wilder animals, and survived a stretch of unseasonable cold.

In the end, he must have simply decided that enough was enough.

“We didn’t find Max,” said Paul Lessard, who owns the 3-year-old papillon. “Max found us.”

It was an anti-climactic end to what was sometimes a dramatic search for the runaway dog.

The dog’s career as a survivalist and refugee began Sunday. It was that afternoon that the dog squeezed through a truck window left open just 3 inches.

“We don’t know how he did it. His head seems bigger than that space,” said Susan Lessard, Paul’s wife.

That was outside The Home Depot on Mount Auburn Avenue. The dog slipped out of the truck and trotted into the store, presumably to search for Paul.

For several minutes, Home Depot customers and employees chased the dog around trying to capture him. But Max is deceptively fast and by the time Paul was summoned to the area, the dog was gone.

The dog was spotted a half dozen times in coming days but always managed to evade capture. By Friday afternoon, the strain among the family was starting to show.

“Someone spots him every two or three days. But by the time we get out there, he’s gone again,” said Susan Lessard, who owns the dog. “It’s frustrating.”

By then, the family was so desperate to reclaim their pet, they had placed an ad in the Sun Journal on Friday announcing a $1,000 reward for their dog.

Max had fled into the woods behind Home Depot, which abuts Gracelawn. The woods are thick there and crawling with larger animals. In the beginning, they did not expect Max to last very long.

The Lessards searched for more than six hours on Monday. They hung posters at the nearby city garage on Gracelawn Road. They prepared themselves for the worst.

“After a while, I was just getting ready to accept that he was probably gone,” Paul Lessard said. “He is a total home dog. I didn’t expect him to last this long out here.”

Then the calls started coming in. Auburn city employees working at the garage called Lessard to say they had spotted Max.

“When they called, I figured they had found the dog dead by the side of the road,” Paul Lessard said.

Not so fast. Not only was Max alive and well, the city employees reported the dog looked fit. Fit and fast, in fact.

“They tried to catch him, but he just took off running,” Paul Lessard said. “The public works guys have been great to us throughout this whole thing.”

Another day passed. Then another. Max survived wild beasts, traffic and various other dangers of the wide open world. His family developed a strange respect for his survival instincts, but more than anything, they wanted him back home.

“He’s part of the family and I know he wants to be with us,” Susan Lessard said.

By the end of the week, more sightings were reported and the number of people searching for Max grew. A woman in the area of the Pet Cemetery on Gracelawn Road spotted the dog.

She was unable to catch him.

A news reporter covering the story Friday afternoon got a glimpse of Max on Gracelawn Road and then another in the cemetery.

He was unable to catch the dog. Within minutes, five people were prowling the woods calling Max’s name, whistling and searching.

He remained missing by nightfall.

“He’s a mischievous dog,” Susan Lessard said. “He’ll be the death of us yet.”

By dark, the family had set up a position in the Pet Cemetery. They had their other dogs with them, hoping their barks and cries might draw Max out of the woods.

“I know he wants to come home,” Paul Lessard said. “That dog sleeps right between us every night.”

He was right. Just before 8 p.m., Paul was retrieving some bones he had left along a trail. He spotted Max just eight feet away.

“He was just sitting there watching us, as if to say: ‘hey, I think I know these people,'” Paul said.

And that was that. Max came up to his family wagging his tail. He did not look like a household pet who had spent hard times in the wilderness.

“He’s got some burrs and probably some ticks,” Paul said. “But he looks healthy and he’s very energetic. We’re ecstatic.”

Ecstatic and exhausted. After five and a half days of poking the bushes, the Lessard family was taking Max home.

“We’re all going to sleep for about two days, I think,” Paul said. “I must have a thousand cuts on my legs from walking through the woods all week. But it’s worth every one of them to have Max back.”