It’s always a demoralizing experience when circumstances separate someone from their beloved pet, but there are a surprising number of stories that can inspire us to keep hope alive.
These stories have seen dogs and cats reunite with their friends despite the incredible distances that once existed between them. Moreover, some of those animals were rescued from perilous situations months after they went missing and in one case, that reunion happened even after 11 years apart .
RELATED STORIES
But while it’s hard not to worry about the kinds of situations a pet could get themselves into after they’re gone, such concerns were doubly troubling for one Louisiana man as the dog he was worried about only has three legs.
In September of 2021, Harrison Sibley found himself having to flee Louisiana when Hurricane Ida fast approached the Pelican State.
As People reported , he was able to secure a place to stay with a friend in Sevier County, Tennessee while the storm blew over, so he brought his 10-year-old German Shepherd mix named Bear with him.
Unfortunately, Bear would end up running away from him and going missing while the two were on a hike.
But while Sibley eventually returned home to Louisiana, he wasn’t able to find Bear before his journey began.
So over the next six months, he would make four different trips back to Tennessee to try and look for his dog.
And as he searched, a Facebook group would be established so others could help him track down Bear. And finally, they found the lead they needed in January after he was spotted on a security camera.
This was around the time that Jimi Holscher would receive a message from his mother about Sibley’s plight and join the search effort.
In his words, “I’ve never used my drone to find a dog. But I heard he was three-legged and it touched me.”
So he accompanied Sibley during one of his Tennessee trips and before the month was out, he would catch sight of Bear for the first time at 3 am one morning.
But despite the fact that a local couple were able to catch him in a trap and that Sibley got close enough to call out to him, Bear didn’t make himself easy to catch.
Yet after two more days of searching, the couple was able to keep Bear in one place thanks to a larger trap and called Sibley again.
Once again, this happened at about 3 am, but Sibley quickly raced over and was finally able to reunite with his dog for real.
As he put it, “It was so, it was like pure emotion, it was just like — I saw him, I guess the first thing in my head was just like, hold him, grab him.”
He also said that he intends to feed Bear a steak to celebrate.
h/t: People
