MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — On April 26, 2017, Walter Watkins returned to his Memphis home from work, let his three-month-old dog Hennessy out to use the bathroom and went back inside the house to make her meal. When he went back out to get her, she was gone.
“I was doing this for three months with her, from six weeks old when she started going outside. I’m letting her outside so she can be housetrained,” Watkins said.
A woman told him she had seen a man pull Hennessy over the fence, so Watkins started running through the neighborhood looking for the American Bully to no avail.
Watkins and his son, who was 10 years old when Hennessy was stolen, looked for her for more than two years before finally giving up. But then last week, almost six years to the day the dog was stolen, Watkins got a call from the Olive Branch Animal Shelter.
Hennessy had been sold to a family in Olive Branch and the animal shelter had found Hennessy after she had gotten lost. The shelter was able to connect Watkins with Hennessy because Watkins had chipped her when she was a baby and kept his contact information updated. A microchip is a small, electronic chip that is injected under the skin of the pet using a hypodermic needle. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, while a microchip doesn’t act as a GPS tracking device, having one will make it more likely for an owner to be reunited with a lost pet.