Brandon Harker recently returned to his home state of Washington after a nine-month deployment to Afghanistan and wanted nothing more than to hug and pet his beloved dog Oakley.

But unlike many of his peers, the Joint Base Lewis-McChord soldier never got to make his own "dog reacts to owner returning home" video.

It seems that while Harker was away, the friend he had entrusted with the 2-year-old purebred yellow Lab had grown tired of him, and decided to either give him away or sell him.

"Oakley never growled or anything at anybody, always ran up with his whole body shaking and put his head down to sniff you," Harker told a local Fox affiliate. "He was a lap dog; he'd crawl up on the couch and try to fit on your lap."

Harker's social media friends told him Oakley had been put up for sale on Craiglist back in February (or possibly May), but no one knew his current whereabouts.

So Harker decided to post a Craigslist ad of his own asking for any information that may lead to Oakley's safe return.

Oakley has been embedded with a microchip that should make it easy to verify his identity, should he be recovered.

"I am just trying to get him back to me since he was wrongfully given away or sold with out my permission while I was deployed," Harker writes in the post.

As The Daily Dot notes, selling pets on Craigslist violates the site's terms of service, but happens anyway. They found two listings for dogs posted as recently as Friday in "Harker's own Snohomish County."

[H/T: Daily of the Day]