Global Courant 2023-04-29 17:15:28
A dog that went missing in Georgia in 2017 will be reunited with its owner after being found hundreds of miles away around a West Virginia lake.
Tara Hillis, who lives near Atlanta, told WSAZ-TV that her 1-year-old pit bull Chief somehow escaped from her property in 2017 and that she had given up hope of finding him over the years. find.
“I honestly thought I would never see him again,” Hillis admitted. “At first I thought someone might have taken him to try to breed with him, but he’s fixed. So many years go by that you just really miss him.”
Six years later, Chief was found by passersby wandering around East Lynn Lake in Wayne County, West Virginia, about a 430-mile drive from Atlanta.
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A pit bull named Chief who went missing in Georgia six years ago was found in West Virginia. (East Lynn Lake, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
Chief was first found by US Army Corps of Engineers rangers before escaping and being found by another unknown person who took him to a shelter.
“One of our rangers at East Lynn Lake, West Virginia, picked up this dog running loose on the lake property,” a spokesman for the Huntington District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers told Fox News Digital Friday.
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U.S. Army Corps of Engineers building near East Lynn Lake, W. Va. (Google Earth)
“The park rangers kept him at the project office for about a week while they tried to find the owner. Unfortunately, he escaped them. The rangers were contacted by WSAZ and said the dog had been picked up by someone in the community and taken to the animal shelter in Cabell County. The animal shelter scanned it for a microchip and found it belonged to someone in Georgia.”
Chief was taken to the Huntington Cabell Wayne Animal Control Shelter and linked to Hillis thanks to a microchip she placed in him.
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A welcome sign at the entrance to the state of West Virginia. (Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
“I can’t believe this,” Hillis said. “This is insane. Every time I talked about it that day, I got chills.”
Rachel Boone, a K-9 behavior specialist at the shelter, said Chief is fine.
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“Thinking about my dog being missing for so long makes me cry,” Boone said. “I want to cry for her already.”
The shelter said it was figuring out the best way to reunite Chief with Hillis in the Atlanta area. Their reunion can take place this week.
Andrew Mark Miller is a writer at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to [email protected].
