A dog and her family reunited a year after she left home, after a chance meeting at an adoption event in Texas.
The Boxer mix, who the shelter named Gertie, had been at the Pasadena Animal Shelter in the city of Pasadena since June, but hadn’t yet been adopted.
“She was an absolute sweetheart who loved everyone and always had that huge, ear-to-ear smile on her face when she saw you,” the shelter wrote on Facebook, “But some things are meant to be”.
Taking a Surprising Turn
The shelter hosted an adoption event at a local Texas Roadhouse restaurant, and brought Gertie along. A local pastor in attendance thought he recognized the dog, and called a family in his church.
The family’s dog, Cookie, had been missing for a year. They “rushed over”, the shelter explained, and realized that ‘Gertie’ was in fact their missing pup.
Happily, Cookie is now safely back home with her family. There were “lots of smiles, tears, hugs and tail wags all around”, the shelter said.
A Christmas Miracle
Cookie’s dog mom, Berenice Aldape, told The Houston Chronicle that her family’s reunion with the 3-year-old pup was a “Christmas miracle”. They’d spent months looking for Cookie after she left in June last year, she explained.
Despite a suspected sighting of Cookie in the nearby city of Humble, they had no luck. But once Berenice and husband Oscar got to the restaurant, they knew the dog was Cookie. “When I saw her, I said, ‘Give me paw,’ and she did and I knew this was Cookie,” she said.
“We don’t have a lot of money for expensive presents,” Aldape said. “But even if we did and bought the most expensive things, we couldn’t buy what Cookie means to us”. “This truly was our Christmas miracle.”
“We could have never imagined a family reunion as sweet as the one that took place during the event,” the shelter wrote on Facebook.
