Army Vet Reunited With Stolen Dog In Christmas Miracle

JONES, OK — Just before Christmas, someone broke into Geoff Hoffman’s Jones, Oklahoma, house and stole his dog, Bridget. The burglar had moved the TV, but nothing was missing except his dog — a companion Hoffman said he “loved beyond definition.” He thinks it’s likely some wretched soul took Bridget, a pit bull, for dog fighting and cut and starved her to make her aggressive. Bridget was plenty messed up when she was found on Christmas Eve, four days after she was abducted.

What the dog went through went beyond her physical injuries. They included knife cuts to her leg, internal bleeding from stress or a strange diet, and bumps on her head and back that veterinarians said likely were caused as Bridget tried to push herself out of a barbed-wire topped cage or enclosure. The wounds have scabbed over, but the scars will be a permanent reminder of her ordeal.

“The soul was gone from her eyes,” Hoffman told Patch. “She had the thousand-mile stare. Bridget was just — the only way I can describe it is, her soul was gone. Her eyes were vacant and empty, and she was not her usual lovable self.”

Hoffman’s tender heart aches for Bridget, his “ever-eager adventure partner and eternal source of joy.”

“I wish she never knew that sort of evil in the world existed,” he said of the strong likelihood Bridget was stolen for dog fighting. He’s never known her to be aggressive, but even docile dogs will become so when they’re tortured. He thinks she was targeted as a “bait dog” the “meaner dogs would beat up on.”

Dog fighting is a felony in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, but it is a persistent problem. Pit bulls like Bridget are often used in the blood sport, according to the ASPCA.

MISSING LEASH THE FIRST CLUE

Bridget wasn’t there to jump on him and give friendly licks on Dec. 20 when Hoffman came home from his job at Scott Sabolich Prosthetics and Research in Oklahoma City, where he is a prosthetist. The burglar left the front door and gate open and took some steps to make to make it look like a typical home break-in, but the clue that she had been abducted, and hadn't merely wandered off after chasing the intruder away, was that her leash was gone, too.

“They walked her out with my leash,” Hoffman said. “That’s how we know she was most definitely stolen.”

Bridget goes everywhere with Hoffman — businesses that allow dogs, the dog park. “Anywhere I can take her, I take her,” he said.

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Hoffman thinks someone saw them together, followed him home and cased his house, waiting until he was gone to steal Bridget.

“It takes some guts to steal my dog,” he said, struggling with the right words to describe the person who took Bridget, finally saying it was “a sick person who has no respect for life, no respect for people and the dogs they love.”

Police took a preliminary report of the break-in, but aren’t investigating, Hoffman said. Patch reached out to the Jones Police Department for a comment. We’ll update this story if we get a call back.

What Hoffman calls a “Christmas miracle” began to reveal itself the moment he posted of Bridget’s disappearance on Facebook. It spread from his small network of friends to pages across Oklahoma to the world. Within days, it had been shared tens of thousands of times and generated thousands of comments.

“Every single comment, and I’ve read them all, have been positive,” Hoffman said. “The internet can be a terrible place, but every single person was supportive and caring, provided suggestions and words of encouragement.”

The support from strangers lifted his spirits some, but he was sick with worry. He slept and ate little. When he wasn’t working, he was looking for Bridget.

He figured he had hung up his “Sgt. Hoffman hat” when he left the Army a decade ago and began seven years of college that would end with a master’s degree. (Hoffman spent eight years in the Army, four of them at a specialized government agency in Washington, D.C., and the remainder with the 1st Battalion of the 10th Special Forces Group in Germany, before his discharge at the rank of staff sergeant).

He approached the search for Bridget like he had every mission in his Army career. “I dusted off my Sgt. Hoffman hat and devised my mission,” he said

He started with the Facebook post, then posted fliers with Bridget’s picture and a description around town. He printed small business cards people could take with them, so they would have both Bridget's picture and his contact information handy if they saw the missing dog.

A ‘CHRISTMAS MIRACLE’

In the end, it was Hoffman’s girlfriend who found Bridget. She prefers to stay behind the scenes in a story that has gained worldwide attention, and asked that her name not be used.

As Hoffman did, his girlfriend found sleep to be elusive during the days Bridget was missing. Awake early on Christmas Eve, she got in her car and started driving, her eyes peeled to the side of a lonely, dark gravel road near Hoffman’s acreage.

And there she was, curled up in a ball along the side of the road. Bridget wasn’t moving, and Hoffman’s girlfriend “didn’t know if she was alive or frozen or hurt,” he said.

“She was bloody and she wasn’t moving,” Hoffman said. But as his girlfriend approached, Bridget began to wag her tail.

“That’s the real miracle,” Hoffman said. “If it weren’t for my girlfriend getting up in the night and driving around in the pitch black, below freezing temperatures, we wouldn’t have found her.”

When he got his girlfriend’s call, “my heart jumped out of my chest,” he said, “but I was very worried when I heard she was bleeding.”

He rushed to the emergency veterinarian’s office, full of hope, but fear, too.

It’s unclear how Bridget ended up on the side of the road, but the detective in Hoffman has a theory.

“There was such massive coverage of this story, I think whoever stole my dog realized there was too much pressure to keep her,” he said. “They were going to get caught, so they decided to dump her in the middle of the night.”

When she was found, she was still wearing the distinctive collar Hoffman had bought for her. He figured that’s the the first thing the person who took her would have ditched. And she still had her tags, though the dognappers had tried to scrape off Hoffman’s contact information.

A THIRD CHANCE AT LIFE

Bridget was in bad shape. She stood at Hoffman’s side, but he worried the dog he has loved for the past two years would never fully return. “She was a shell of herself,” he said.

One of the cuts on her legs was so deep, cutting clean through muscle, that it required stitches. The many other lacerations will heal naturally. The emergency vet who first saw her wanted to keep her overnight, but she responded so well to the IV rehydration fluids, antibiotics, probiotics for her stomach and assorted other medications that she was allowed to return home Christmas Eve night.

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Bridget, normally a dainty eater, was ravenous, and exhausted.

“She slept for 24 hours straight, waking only to eat,” he said.”Her eyes were so heavy, and that lasted about two days. She’s still tired, but she’s perking up.”

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Hoffman took Bridget to the vet Thursday for a follow-up visit, and she was acting more like herself, he said. Her soul seems to be coming back, too.

“She loves to make new friends,” Hoffman said. “She saw some cats behind the glass, and she wanted to be friends.”

He is grateful to have his dog back, but also for the outpouring of support on social media. Someone even started a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign to cover veterinary bills. He also plans to use the money to get a GPS tracking device for his dog, and make security improvements so thieves will think twice before stealing his dog again.

“I’ve never experienced anything like it,” he said of the online support. “All I did was one single Facebook post."

He made the post on his personal page, but the Bring Bridget Back Facebook page will remain active as a resource for others looking for lost pets, he said. Some of the tactics he employed may help others, he said.

Bridget now has a third chance at life. The second came two years ago when she was an abandoned stray and made her way to Hoffman’s workplace.

“We took her in the building, and everybody fell in love with her,” Hoffman said. “Wherever she goes, she wants to meet everybody.”

Nobody fell harder for the dog than Hoffman, but he and his coworkers wanted to do the right thing. They took her to a veterinarian for a microchip scan and general health checkup, then to a local Humane Society shelter.

“As the story goes, the owner came and picked her up, then dropped her back off,” Hoffman said. “When I heard that, I seized the opportunity and I adopted her myself.”

They’ve been everything to each other ever since.

Below, Bridget tries to make friends with cats.

All photos courtesy of Geoff Hoffman