PULASKI COUNTY, Va. — A Virginia family has been reunited with their beloved dog after years of separation after the animal turned up at a shelter just 30 minutes from their Pulaski County home.
The Boyd family lost their dog Romeo in 2021. Two weeks ago, they discovered he was at the Radford Animal Shelter, WDBJ reported.
"It was very surreal, I guess you could say, because it's been so long," Emalee Boyd said. "But it's amazing. I love him so much."
Boyd says Romeo joined her family back in 2019 during the early days of the pandemic.
"He was our quarantine puppy and he did everything with us," Boyd recalled.
As COVID restrictions were ending, Boyd's time with Romeo also came to an end. He was spending the weekend with another family, but Boyd never saw him again.
It wasn't until she was scrolling through Facebook that she spotted Romeo's distinctive smile in a post from the Radford shelter.
"I immediately called the first thing in the morning, and it was the weekend, so I bombarded them the whole weekend," Boyd said."They eventually got back to me and told me I was welcome to come by and take a look."
When they met, the connection was immediate.
"He was kind of like creeping in through his outside door and didn't really react until she let him out," Boyd said. "When she let him out, he was in my face."
Officials at the shelter told Boyd Romeo "seemed down" and "was kind of moping around."
"But he said he'd been a happy boy when I came and seen him," Boyd said.
Now, Boyd wants anyone who believes their four-legged best friends are lost to remember they can have that same luck when they least expect it.
"I definitely did not expect him to remember me the way he did," Boyd said. "All kinds of animals that end up in these shelters. They remember, they remember their owners, they remember the people that love them."
Romeo, now a senior dog, will live out the rest of his days with Boyd and her sisters.
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