PORT CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Liberty was lost, but now she is found.

Almost two days after she was reported missing, the year-old black Labrador mascot of the Port Canaveral Coast Guard Station was found around 6:45 a.m. Tuesday in a locked steel container full of flares and other pyrotechnics, Local 6 News partner Florida Today reported. She had been missing since around 2 p.m. Sunday.

Her disappearance triggered a basewide search and elsewhere around Port Canaveral. Officials even looked in the water, thinking she may have been swept off the dock by heavy winds.

The officer of the day, Mike Lynch, was making his rounds Tuesday morning when he checked the pyrotechnics box, Chief John Rice said. It was the one place they hadn't checked.

There she was. All 50 pounds of her.

"Mike opened the door and she just looked at him like, 'Hey, you gonna let me out now?'" Rice said. "She stretched legs and took off for the main building."

Rice was reading the morning newspaper when she came bounding in.

Liberty was with the last man to check the pyrotechnics box. She must have crawled up into the 4-by-4-foot steel container while it was raining and he closed her up in it without noticing, Rice said.

"We are definitely pleased we found her," Rice said. "We are going to enact safeguards to make sure that doesn't happen again."

Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.