HUNTINGTON, W. Va. — It was a phone call that Tara Hillis thought she would never get – someone found her dog Chief.
Chief disappeared six years ago from here in Georgia. Over the weekend, Chief showed up at an animal shelter -- in West Virginia.
“(I) honestly thought I’d never see him again,” Hillis told WSAZ-TV.
Hillis said Chief disappeared in 2017 when he was just a one-and-a-half year old.
“He either jumped the fence or dug up under it,” Hillis told the TV station. “Initially I thought maybe someone took him to try to breed him, but he’s fixed. So many years go by, you just kind of, ‘Oh, I miss him.’”
When weeks turned into years of Chief being gone, with no idea where he went, Hillis never imagined she would see him again.
That was until he turned up over the weekend, several states away.
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“It’s heartwarming. It’s pretty amazing,” said Rachel Boone, who works at the Huntington Cabell Wayne County Animal Shelter in West Virginia.
The shelter said Chief was found wandering alone Saturday and was brought in.
“He’s just a big baby,” Boone said.
Chief was microchipped and that was how they were able to track him to Hillis.
“I can’t believe this. I cannot believe this. This is insane,” Hillis said. “Every single time I’d talk about it, all day that day, I’d get chill bumps.”
As for where Chief has been this whole time, that remains a mystery.
But Hillis will soon have Chief back home where he belongs.
A worker at the shelter has offered to meet Hillis halfway to return Chief to her.
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