Safely Home: Holy Smokes – It’s Our Smokey!

My dog, Smokey, is a Husky. He is a bit of a runner and explorer. One summer evening in late August 2012 he ran out of our fenced-in dog area. He never used to go far, staying close to the house or to the woods at the end of my yard. This time was different though because, when it came to the time for him to eat, he wasn’t there! We searched and searched for Smokey. We asked all the neighbors on our little road to keep an eye out and to let us know if they saw him. The days went by and there was no sign of him anywhere.

Then a neighbor told us that they didn’t like Smokey and had made sure we would never see him again! We still continued to look, hoping that they were only making up the unkind suggestion. We would call our local animal control and ask whether any Huskies had been found and, if so, could we come to check to see if it was Smokey. As the months went by and turned into years we started checking a little less. We finally started believing that the worse had happened. Then, one evening I checked my email and there was a message saying Smokey had been found. It was too late to get anyone on the phone that evening so I had to wait until the next morning to find out if this was for real! I thought that there was no way, after all that time, that it could be Smokey. After I called PetLink and spoke to a wonderful lady, she assured me that it was indeed my dog. She put me in contact with the animal shelter that had him. I drove 90 minutes to where he was and saw that, though he was a little banged up, he was still my Smokey. It is hard to say whether he fully recognized us or not, but I really believe he did.

I learned that, unfortunately, Smokey had been placed in my local shelter three times and was almost put down when the people that had been taking care of him found him. He had traveled from one city to the next and so on until he ended up a good way away from our house. If he had not been chipped, I would never have gotten my Smokey back. He has a family that loves him and a home that was empty without him. Thank you PetLink – your microchip brought my family back together again.