After two frustrating days, searchers in Missouri have found alive a 3-year-old boy who wandered away from his home in the rugged hills of the Mark Twain National Forest, the Associated Press reports.

Joshua Childers, who slipped away from his family's mobile home near Arcadia in rural southeast Missouri Monday morning, was in remarkably good condition, the AP says.

Donnie Halpin, a search volunteer, found the boy lying on the ground after he spotted stray dogs sniffing at something Wednesday afternoon. Halpin told the AP that he  wasn't sure at first if he was alive and shouted "Hey, Bud." But Joshua "jumped right up and grinned and me," he said.

"I said, 'You ready to go home?' He said, 'Yeah,'" Halpin told AP.

Halpin said Joshua wasn't crying or complaining. "He hung on to me pretty tight," Halpin said. "Outside of a few scratches, he was in really good shape."

(Photo via AP)