JONESBORO, Ark. (AP) - An unlikely adventure came to a close late one night when the Catron family was reunited with their beloved Poncho - a Chihuahua-pug mix that had been missing for nearly a month and had traveled 45 miles by train.
Rhonda Catron said Poncho went missing around noon on Feb. 13 when he wandered into the street near the family home on County Road 766.
“Poncho apparently was in the road, and a lady stopped to pick him up and took a picture of him to post on social media sites,” she said. “Soon after she stopped, a man stopped to see if she needed help.”
When the lady told him she had only stopped to help the dog in the road, he told her he thought the dog belonged to his neighbor - who lived 1.3 miles down the road.
When he discovered it wasn’t his neighbor’s dog, Catron said the man went about his business, running into town for lunch and a trip to the Craighead County Jonesboro Public Library, The Jonesboro Sun reports.
“He left Poncho in his truck while he went in to eat, then he told us he fed Poncho,” she said. “Then he went to the library, and he told us he was there for an hour and a half.”
When he returned to his truck, Catron said he discovered a woman who was interested in the dog, so he gave Poncho to her, without getting her name or any information except that she was in her 50s and had white hair.
When the Catrons confirmed the first part of Poncho’s journey through social media, they headed to the library on Feb. 15 to try to find answers.
“We wanted to see video footage to try to find the woman who had taken Poncho,” Catron said. “They told us we needed a court order for that, and we understand that their hands were tied.”
The Catrons printed flyers and distributed them in every veterinarian’s office in town, the Northeast Arkansas Humane Society, Jonesboro Animal Control and any store that agreed to help. They placed ads in The Sun, and they shared their story on social media and Craig’s List.
They chased every lead they got - which Catron said were many, The Jonesboro Sun reports.
“At one point, we thought we had found Poncho, because six people called to tell us they found our dog,” she said. “He wasn’t our Poncho.”
The Catrons, however, adopted that dog, too, because he was another Chihuahua in need of a home.
“My husband was adamant that this was not a replacement for Poncho,” Catron said, “but a brother for when Poncho returned home.”
And they never gave up hope.
Then 27 days after Poncho’s disappearance, at around 9 p.m., the Catrons got a phone call from a woman in Newport who thought she had Poncho after seeing one of the ads.
“Her boyfriend’s brother was working on the railroad and saw Poncho walking by the tracks on Feb. 13 near Burke Avenue,” Catron said. “He picked up Poncho and took him to Newport because he knew his brother would take the dog.”
Catron said the family in Newport had given Poncho a new name, Ozzy, and had taken great care of him.
“He lived with them for a month as their own,” she said. “Throughout this thing, many people have sent us pictures of dogs that never turned out to be Poncho, but when the lady in Newport sent us the picture, we knew that was our Poncho.”
The Catrons took off for Newport that night, and Catron said the family declined the reward that had been offered for Poncho’s return and gave the Catrons the bed they had purchased for him, along with the treats he had been eating.
“You never give up hope, because every time you start to get discouraged, you get a new lead,” Catron said. “This is a great story, because hope prevails.”
There’s a lesson to be learned from every good story, and for Catron, that lesson is in the importance of collars with tags.
“Collar your pets with a tag with your phone number on it, or your vet’s phone number on it,” she said. “But if you see a stray, sometimes it’s just a dog that got away.”
Margaret Shepherd, executive director of the Northeast Arkansas Humane Society agrees Catron on collaring pets.
“Seeing a distressed dog on a highway is one thing, but a dog standing outside a fence or walking in its own yard is not a problem that people need to try to solve,” she said. “The best advice is to get a collar and have the dog’s rabies tag on because that tag number is exclusive to that veterinarian, and they will find the owner.”
One of the first steps if you find a stray dog, Shepherd said, is to call both Animal Control and the Humane Society. That’s the step that cost Poncho a month with his family.
“Poncho sure had a big adventure, and we’re all glad it had such a great ending,” she said. “It sounds like a Hallmark movie to me!”
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Information from: The Jonesboro Sun, https://www.jonesborosun.com
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