Happy Dog Reunion Story!

I just had to share with everyone this wonderful story from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette about a pup lost for 5 long years finding his way home. You can also check out the video of the heartwarming family reunion. It sure is going to be a great Thanksgiving this year for Tootsie!


Toot-toot Tootsie, don't cry: Dog found after 5 years
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
By Tracie Mauriello, Post-Gazette Harrisburg Bureau
Andrew Rush/Post-Gazette

HARRISBURG -- Tootsie, the adventuresome dachshund who went missing more than five years ago, is back home in Pleasantville, N.J.

Tootsie was found two weeks ago wandering around Wilkinsburg, 350 miles away from where he went missing in 2003. He was taken to the Animal Rescue League of Western Pennsylvania and was traced back to his owners using information on a microchip implanted under the skin on the back of his neck.

"Donde estaba?" -- Where have you been? -- his owner Elda Arguello said yesterday as she wrapped Tootsie in her scarf outside a television studio in Harrisburg -- the halfway point between Pleasantville and Wilkinsburg. Tifanie Tibero of the rescue league delivered Tootsie to her there. The dog was shivering from the cold but appeared content in Mrs. Arguello's arms.

"He was my baby. Now he's coming home," she said, grinning.

The family believes the dog had been taken from their gated yard.

"I looked for him for many, many days," said Mrs. Arguello, 53, who brought two of her five children -- Edna Colon, 18, and Daniel Colon Jr., 16 -- with her to pick up Tootsie yesterday.

So much time had passed that when the rescue league sent her a letter several days ago she hadn't remembered losing a dog.

Daniel did, though.

"I said, 'What about Tootsie?,' " Daniel remembered. "I just put that out there, but I didn't really think they could have really found her 5 1/2 years later."

Edna remembered he had an extra toe on one of his back paws. When the shelter said the dog found in Wilkinsburg did, too, she knew it was the same 6-month-old puppy she had when she was 13.

"He got longer," Edna said.

"He's got [some] gray hair now," her brother remarked.

The shelter used a scanner on Tootsie to find a similar microchip that the family had a veterinarian place in the dachshund's neck when he was a puppy. Information gleaned from the chip was run through a national database.

"Without a microchip, the reunion would have been completely, unequivocally and undeniably impossible," said Janice Barnard, the rescue league's director of special programs.

The family is keenly aware of that.

"Now we're going to put another one in the other dog we have back home, just in case," Daniel said.

The microchips have been in use since 1989 and cost between $20 and $100, depending on whether they are inserted at shelters or veterinary clinics. They are useful in reuniting owners of dogs and cats, such as George, a brown short-haired feline who was returned earlier this month to his owner in California after 13 years.

Tootsie's whereabouts for the last five years remain a mystery, although it is clear he has been well-fed and cared for, Ms. Tibero said.

"We have no idea where Tootsie has been or what he's been up to ... but he obviously needed to get back to the right place," she said. "I'm just glad to be able to carry out the rescue league's mission of reuniting lost pets and their owners ... It's something that very rarely, if ever, happens. It's a one-in-a-million kind of thing."