Dog's Long Journey from Florida to Michigan Has Happy Ending

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DEARBORN, MI – Zeus is one of those cute, smart pooches oozing so much personality that he could be the protagonist in a story about amazing dogs.

Think “Benji,” who delighted movie fans in the 1970s, or Marley from John Grogan’s “Marley & Me.” Or go way back to “Lassie,” or back even farther to ancient Greece, to Odysseus and his faithful dog Argos.

“That’s him,” Friends For the Dearborn Animal Shelter Executive Director Elaine Greene said of Zeus on the eve of the dog’s unexpected reunion with his owner, who lives more than 1,000 miles away in Florida, after a two-year separation.

“He understands what you’re saying and he listens well,” Greene told Patch. “I’m not sure how he wanders away, or how he gets where he gets, but he keeps getting himself into predicaments.”

The pug-nosed terrier’s latest predicament led him to the Dearborn Animal Shelter, where the staff scanned him for a microchip and found a frantic Debi Petranck, who has never abandoned hope that she would find her beloved dog.

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Petranck, of Ocala, FL, is on the road to Dearborn, where she and Zeus will be reunited Tuesday afternoon in what Greene said is one of the more unusual homecomings the shelter has been able to facilitate.

How Zeus came to Michigan in the first place is a cautionary tale in itself.

He took the dog in and brought the dog to Michigan, Greene said, and "thought he was doing a good thing for the dog."

Zeus has been well cared for, which assuaged Petranck’s worst fear — that her adorable black and white dog was lost and starving or, worse, had fallen into cruel hands.

“The person who had him really cared for him and was sad to hear he wouldn’t be able to take him back home,” Greene said.

Greene, who seen horrific abuse cases in her animal rescue work, doesn’t like thinking about who Zeus might have ended up with “if the kids were that ready to give him to anybody.”

The best course of action when a stray is found is to check with an animal shelter and have the animal scanned for a microchip. Too often, if people see an animal without a collar — which dogs can easily slip, Greene said, and which can pose special problems for cats — they assume they aren’t cared for or have been abandoned.

“There may be someone who’s really, really missing the animal,” Greene said.

The reunion, Greene said, is a result of the “miracles of microchipping.”

For a one-time, affordable fee, pet owners like Petranck can provide for the permanent identification of their pets.

A veterinarian inserts the microchip in the back of a dog or cat’s neck with a small syringe. The chip carries appropriate information about the pet and contact information for the owner.

The Dearborn Animal Shelter is offering microchipping for $15 throughout the month of April, and other shelters offer similar programs, Greene said. All animals that are adopted out by the Dearborn shelter are microchipped, also a common shelter practice.

Petranck “was ecstatic when we called,” Greene said. “For two years, she had been feverishly looking for him, placing ads in local papers and following up on many dead-end leads.”

Of course, Petranck never imagined that Zeus had made his way from the Florida peninsula to a few miles south of U.S.-Canada border.

“This is one of those rewarding occasions that a joyful reunion results from a stray dog being brought into our care, it’s what we always hope for them,” Greene said.

Image credit: Friends For Dearborn Animal Shelter