"She is so sweet. Hounds usually are and this breed is so intelligent and friendly," says rescue volunteer Kelly Whittington, "Her dad, who she's going home to, used to run with her. So she's gonna be happy to get back to that." Volunteers will be up bright and early tomorrow to put Avery on plane back home. It's a flight they paid for with community donations, because neither they nor Avery's family could afford the trip. For more information on how you can help dogs like Avery, check out Cullen's Archangel Rescue's website, by clicking http://www.cullensarchangelrescue.org/.
It's been about a year since Avery's seen her parents, after they say she was stolen from their yard... all the way in Colorado. "They tried to find her. They put up flyers, they surfed the internet," says Whittington.
It's a scenario she can only imagine. "I know how I would feel if it was my dog and she wound up in Colorado," she says.
Whittington found Avery in a Columbia animal shelter and knew this spotted canine was different from the rest. She remembers, "She stood up on the cage and her little nub was wagging at me and she looked me in the eyes and I melted."
No one's for sure what brought Avery all the way to Columbia from Colorado, but her parents will surely be happy to have her home. Says Whittington, "They're thrilled and they just can't wait to see her again."
Avery did have a microchip, but the owners' new number wasn't on file. "She's been missing for a year, so it didn't occur to them to update their number. They probably thought she was gone forever," Whittington says.
But, with hard work from volunteer Lil Bridgeman to find Avery's owners, they were able to write a happy ending. Says Whittington, "We see a lot of the bad, the heartbreaking stuff so to have one work out like this, it makes it all worth it."
10/11/2008 5:18:41 PM
