Have you guys ever watched the movie Homeward Bound? When I was a kid, it was one of my favorite movies and I watched it literally all the time. If you never saw it, the storyline goes like this (via IMDB):
“Three pets (Chance, a young dog unfamiliar with the world; Shadow, an aging, wise dog; and Sassy, a snobby cat) are left behind when their family goes on vacation. Unsure of what happened, the animals set out on a quest to find their family. This journey across America is very dangerous and the animals risk never seeing their masters again. The group of pets travel across forested mountains and areas of wide-open countryside, while their family searches for them in the same areas.”
Well guess what, that just happened but in real life! It all started when Adam Herbaugh was on a walk with his two dogs in Roaring Spring, Pennsylvania, and another dog showed up behind them. Herbaugh asked the stray dog if he wanted to come with them, and surprisingly he did!
He brought the stray dog to a local animal hospital and they scanned the microchip that the dog thankfully had. Dog owners if you don’t have your animal chipped, you will want to after reading this.
Herbaugh and the vet found out that the pup, named Jake, belonged to owners all the way in Phoenix, Arizona! After they found that out, they spoke to A Darrah Bull Bully Rescue to assist further.
Renae Metz who is the president of the rescue couldn’t believe Jake’s journey. She told The Dodo that her “initial reaction was complete shock.”
Jake had been missing for almost a year and a half. Somehow he had made it across the entire country. Metz also said:
“There is speculation that possibly a truck driver found Jake in Arizona and brought him to Pennsylvania, but that is simply a guess due to the fact that we have a large trucking company in our small town. Jake’s owners do not know anyone from Pennsylvania, or anyone on the East Coast for that matter, so they were just as baffled as we are.”
Jake’s family had just had a newborn baby, so they couldn’t make the trek all the way to Pennsylvania. So Metz and her team took on the challenge.
She reached across Facebook and found volunteers to help transfer Jake back to the home he had last seen over a year ago. Jake wore a white shirt with “Arizona Or Bust” and his journey began. Each person that helped signed his shirt and once he was back home, it had over 20 signatures. Jake was finally back with his family!
Jake was super happy and you can see this as volunteers also took pictures with him.
Metz concluded:
“Microchips are an amazing tool to reunite owners and lost dogs. This was the key reason why Jake was able to find his owners after being missing for almost a year and a half.”
So is your dog chipped?