Amazing story of the Prodigal Pup

In Winnebago County, Ill., Bob and Cheryl Moeller were startled Tuesday to get a call from animal shelter authorities.

Five years after he disappeared from their backyard at a Memorial Day picnic, their son Brent’s beloved purebred collie, Bo, had been found – and the chip in his neck had their family numbers.

When Bo went missing in 2003, the Moellers put up photo posters, canvassed door to door and went to 12 area police departments to spread the news of their missing pup. Strangely, last Sunday morning, the Moeller’s daughter, Melissa, had awakened after a vivid dream that Bo had come home. “She told us all about it, that we were all happy and playing,” Moeller said.

Tuesday, the family got the good news: the prodigal pup was back. At the county shelter, the dog immediately walked up to Brent, and remembered the old training commands as if dog and master had never been parted. Word spread quickly of the Moeller’s reunion with Bo; the animal rescue staff had never seen owner and pet reunited after so many years. Local newspapers and TV stations hovered to document the feel-good story that centered around a boy, his dog – and the chip that reunited them.

At the time they got Bo, then a puppy, the chip wasn’t optional.“It came with the initial shots,” Cheryl Moeller recalled.

Bedraggled and neglected upon his mysterious return, he was in ill health and showed evidence of having been caged. Although his city dog tags had been removed, he still wore the collar that had his name on it. “It’s so awful to think who in the world would do this?” Moeller said.

The Moellers, who are both in Christian ministry as family conference speakers and authors, see the hand of the Almighty in Bo’s account of reconciliation.“It sure makes you believe in miracles,” she said. “We give the credit to God – we believe this didn’t happen by accident.”

In Ellis County, Texas, Jennifer Kingsley saw the chip at work. She noticed an adorable Jack Russell terrier sitting on the running board of an antique truck in her neighborhood. “We were going to take a picture of him with our phone, and he jumped into the car,” Jennifer recalled. After determining that the truck owner was not the dog’s owner, Kingsley and her son Ryan walked the entire neighborhood, knocking on doors to see if anyone had lost a pet. Unable to find his home, they brought him to theirs. Kingsley chuckles when she recalls the dog’s brisk energy and the tendency to leap tall couches with a single bound. “He had so much energy,” she said.

Clearly, the pooch was the apple of someone’s eye. The question was, whose? The Kingsleys took the bundle of energy to the Ennis Veterinary Clinic, where a scan revealed the dog had a microchip that in turn led them to the breeder, who went through records to get in touch with the owner who bought the dog.

Chip to the rescue.

While a chip on your shoulder isn’t a good thing, the right kind of chip on your pet’s shoulder could save its life.

Thanks to new technology, with the simple insertion of a tiny microchip, lost pets can be reunited with their owners. But it takes forethought.At the Waxahachie Animal Shelter, senior officer Cindi Walters has made scanning strays for microchips part of the intake routine.

With every dog that is brought in, a chip reader is used to scan the shoulder area. When the scanner detects a number, she relays that number to the chip company, who then helps locate the owner.

“In the past year, out of 100 or more dogs [taken in as strays], we’ve only had one animal that had a microchip in it,” she said.Walters estimates that out of those same 50 dogs, perhaps half of them appeared not to be strays – they appeared to have belonged to someone.And that’s a heartbreaking statistic she said.

“I’ve got two in right now that no owners have called about, but both have brand-new collars on them, so I know somebody’s owned them somewhere,” Walters said.

Her advice to pet owners? Get your vet to put a chip in your animal. “A collar can always be lost, tags can always be lost, but the microchip is always there,” she said.

At Ennis Veterinary Clinic, Dr. Mac Boyd said the chip is an emerging technology many pet owners haven’t taken advantage of. “It’s a good program – amazing technology,” he said.“We put quite a few in – but the vast majority of pets don’t have them yet, because there’s some expense involved in it. We charge $41 to put on in – it’s not a tremendously high price, but it’s an extra expense some people don’t want to have.” Another benefit is if there’s ever a dispute about dog ownership, the chip can carry the truth about the owner. “It’s like a fingerprint,” he said.

The chip itself is the size of a grain of rice and undetectable, Boyd said.“ The dog doesn’t feel it – it doesn’t cause discomfort. It doesn’t give off signals, it just reacts when the scanner passes over it,” he said, echoing Cindi Walters’ advice to just get the chip put in. “Nobody thinks their pet’s going to get lost, but nationwide, lots of pets find their way back home because of those chips,” Boyd said.

The life you save could be your own dog’s.

E-mail J. Louise at jlouise.larson@wninews.com.

This article originally appeared in the Waxahachie Daily Light.

http://www.thedailylight.com/articles/2008/07/21/news/doc4884d630bf097302352268.txt

For more on the true story of Bo's return to his family, see:
http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=221232

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-lost-dogjul16,0,430110.story

http://www.dailyherald.com/multimedia/?category=9&type=video&item=181

http://cbs2chicago.com/watercooler/lost.dog.reunion.2.772114.html

http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/us/illinois/cook-county/arlington-heights-PLGEO100100501040000.topic

http://www.chicagotribune.com/topic/us/illinois/cook-county/arlington-heights-PLGEO100100501040000.topic