A story set up for tragedy ended in a heart-melting reversal as a missing dog of five years was reunited with its rightful owners. Even after such a long time, the dog immediately relaxed in its owner’s arms, bringing its rescuers and animal shelter staff to tears.
Tanya Ohanian is the canine director of the Evanston Animal Shelter, located in Cook County, Illinois, and she recalled getting a call about a stray dog in a nearby park. On most days, this is par for the course; a wayward animal gets phoned in and the shelter goes to rescue it.
Ohanian next said a common practice is to nowadays scan retrieved animals for a microchip, hoping to gather information on ownership and area of residence. When the dog’s chip scan came back inconclusive, she assumed she had merely hit a dead end.
However, according to The Dodo, what happened next was tantamount to being miraculous. Ohanian enlisted the help of an entity called Microchip Hunters, which was able to procure “a more detailed account of the dog’s past.” The Dodo wrote:
But soon, with the help of a local organization called Microchip Hunters, the shelter miraculously obtained a more detailed account of the dog’s past.
The new information revealed that the pup wasn’t a nameless stray. The dog’s name was Dottie, and she had a family who’d been missing her for five years.
After the amazing find, Ohanaia was speaking with Dottie’s long-lost family and sharing some remarkable news. Against all odds, the dog had been recovered and could be reunited with her family.
Dottie’s dog dad, a man named George Loving, recalled how he had spent so much time missing his dog that hearing of her discovery was shocking.
“I cried many nights about it,” Loving told The Dodo. Now, he said upon hearing the news, “We were all very, very happy.”
One of the biggest questions for George Loving – and Dottie included – was how a reunion would go. Would she recognize her former owners? Would she embrace a return to their family? Amazingly, Dottie reacted as if she had only been missing since yesterday.
“There was never hesitation,” Ohanian said of his first interaction in five years with Dottie. “It was just beautiful.”
Even Tanya Ohanian said she and her staff became overwhelmed at the moment. “It was emotional for all of us,” Ohanian said. “I think we were all in tears.”
Take a look for yourself as man’s best friend is returned to her rightful home:
Incredibly, stories like this are popping up everywhere. As one animal shelter wrote after it reunited a cat with its cross-country owner after four years, it’s “the power of the microchip.”
“THE POWER OF A MICROCHIP,” a Facebook post began after a shelter was able to track down a cat’s owner.
“Meet Shyla, an 18-year-old cat who went missing 4 YEARS ago!! Shyla is from a shelter in California but no matter where she and her owner moved, her owner always kept information on the microchip up to date. Well the power of a microchip paid off because it was how we found her owner. It was fate,” the post concluded.
That story was about Shyla, a South Carolina-raised cat that somehow ended up in California after four years. The American Tribune wrote last January:
An animal shelter in South Carolina shared some great news to start out the new year, celebrating the reunion of a cat and its owner after four years of separation.
Dorchester Paws, which calls itself “your community animal shelter,” posted an amazingly heartstrings-pulling update to its Facebook page writing that the now-eighteen-year-old cat, Shyla, waa returned to its owner as a result of a microchip that had been implanted several years ago.
Featured image: Facebook, Tanya Ohanian
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