A scared pup got lost at the Eagles parade. Then Philly dog lovers stepped in.

In the middle of the surging crowds and wild merrymaking of the Eagles’ victory parade, one creature cowered alone: a slight and very scared young black dog, either lost or abandoned. She had no collar or tags, just a black and white plaid dog coat — an Eddie Bauer, to be exact — but no human of her own in sight. She could have easily been ignored.

Except she was not. A bunch of animal-loving parade-goers moved in like the Eagles’ defensive line, especially one Philadelphian who decided this pup wasn’t getting left behind. By the time it was over, the dog had a name (Francine), new friends, and more.

Our tale begins with Kate Gonsalves, 28, a Fishtown resident and Eagles fan, who was with friends at the parade at Pennsylvania Avenue near 23rd Street, trying to work their way through the increasing crush of people to get closer to the Art Museum steps and the stage before the team buses arrived. The friends linked arms so they didn’t get separated.

“Then we see all these people crouching down, and they were yelling, ‘There’s a dog! There’s a dog! Watch out!’” Gonsalves said. Then she saw a panicked-looking dog running toward her, with three other women trying to hold on to her coat.

“I bent down, and they were like, ‘Is this your dog? We’re trying to find whose dog this is.’ I said no,” but she saw how frightened the dog was. Meanwhile, fireworks were going off. The roaring crowd was pushing in.

“Right then and there, I said, ‘She’s going to get stepped on, something bad is going to happen to her.’ We had to get her out of there.”

So one of the other women, a nurse, asked Gonsalves if she would help her get the dog out of the crowd, toward the sidewalk. They proceeded to squeeze their way through, leaving their friends but holding onto the plaid-jacketed dog.

It took them about 20 minutes to get through the crowd. When they finally did, the two rescuers walked past the nearby houses, asking if anyone had lost a dog. Another woman and her boyfriend stopped to ask about the dog; the dog hopped into her arms, and Gonsalves took their photograph. Yet another woman stopped and offered to call 911 to try to get some guidance; no one else’s phone had reception . When they finally connected, the 911 operator suggested asking a police officer working the parade if anybody had reported a lost dog.

Gonsalves saw what she thought was an officer across the street but it turned out to be just a man in a dark jacket. And by the time she got to him, the milling crowd had swallowed up the three people she was with — whose names she didn’t know — and the dog. She couldn’t find them but was comforted knowing that the dog wouldn’t be abandoned.

“I had faith those girls weren’t going to let anything happen to her,” Gonsalves said.

Eventually, Gonsalves found the friends she had left behind and rejoined the parade. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the dog. Were her owners looking for her? Where was she now?

So when Gonsalves got home from the parade, she turned to social media, seeking — hoping — for some information. She posted about the dog on Paw Boost, a site to help locate missing pets. She inquired on the Facebook pages of Fairmount and Spring Garden, the neighborhoods closest to where the dog had been found. And she inquired on Philaqueens, a popular Facebook group that has a lot of animal-loving members, posting her photo of the sad-eyed, plaid-coated pup.

It didn’t take long for her posts to get noticed. Some people complained about bringing a dog to an event like the parade. One poster claimed to have seen the dog in the jacket walking that day with a woman and children.

By the next day, two volunteers with ACCT Philly, the city’s open-intake animal shelter, posted on Philaqueens that the lost dog at the Eagles parade was with them. She had no microchip to help identify her, no owners had come to claim her. And her name was now Francine.

The newly christened Francine was safe, but her ordeal had worn on her.

“She was scared at the shelter,” said Alexandra Hunt, 30, a political consultant and ACCT volunteer who posted about her on Philaqueens. She recognized the dog from the plaid jacket in Gonsalves’ photo posts.

“She was a dog out of her element at both a parade and in the shelter, and didn’t know what to do with herself,” said Hunt, who met the dog at ACCT. “It was like suddenly she wasn’t where she wanted to be or with people she knew. You could tell that’s a dog who is shy and feeling pretty alone.”

Another ACCT volunteer responded to Gonsalves’ post with a photo of Francine at the shelter. Her eyes were closed and her ears were lowered.

“I just said to my boyfriend, ‘We have to help this dog. We have to get her out of there,’” said Gonsalves.

So, she got in touch with ACCT’s foster division. On the Monday after the parade, they went to ACCT to visit her. On Tuesday, Feb. 18, after spay surgery, they took Francine home as her long-term fosters, promising her a home with them as long as she needs it.

“She was so scared on the first day, but she was just so loving, giving us kisses,” Gonsalves said. “You could tell she was anxious, but there were deep bursts of like, ‘OK, I’m safe now.’”

The dog was exhausted, too. “She fell asleep sitting up.”

But, it didn’t take long for her real character to start poking through. Francine, or Frankie as Gonsalves and her boyfriend, Jay Biletta, 29, have taken to calling her, burst out in puppy zoomies within a couple of days.

“She’s standing straighter, her ears are always up now,” Gonsalves said. “She loves treats, loves [getting] pets. She’s very affectionate.”

The dog’s ACCT profile indicated she could be as young as 8 months. Gonsalves and Biletta are still trying to guess what breeds she might be. They have learned that under that Eddie Bauer jacket, their new foster dog has some sprightly white markings and loves cuddling up in soft places, especially where they are.

Francine/Frankie, meanwhile, loves to show off what she’s learned. “She loves to fetch and show us, like, ‘Look, be proud of me!’”

And Gonsalves is proud, and grateful, too, for the people of her dog-loving city.

“I’m grateful to everyone that helped her, grateful for everyone that gave me information, and grateful and thankful to everyone so I was able to help her, and she didn’t slip through the cracks.”

“We love her,” she said. “We love having her here.”