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Abandoned Dog Walks 20 Miles Twice to Find Old Family, But They've Moved

By Amanda Thomason January 15, 2018 at 12:25pm

Dogs are widely known for their unflagging loyalty to the human race: they’re always there to help and support. Cats will think about it and get back to you, but the answer is usually no.

Cathleen is a large, lovable Great Pyrenees mix. She has all the best traits of the guardian dog, being gentle and sweet.

She is also very, very loyal. And she proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt by making it clear that home was where her heart was, and she would follow her heart.

She lived in Seminole, Oklahoma, with her family. When her family moved to another house in town, they weren’t able to take her with them.

Cathleen’s family had someone in Prague, about 20 miles away, take care of her while the Seminole Animal Shelter tried to find a new home and family for the dog.

But Cathleen wasn’t interested in finding a new family. She was quite happy with the old one, thank you very much.

So she took matters into her own paws. She managed to get free from her caretakers in Prague and made the long journey back to Seminole, presumably looking for her family.

But she was found, picked up, and returned to Prague. So she got out, again, and doggedly paced back “home,” to make it perfectly clear what she wanted.

At this point it was obvious that her temporary living arrangements were not going to work out. So she was taken in by the Seminole Animal Shelter.

With a low adoption fee of only $25, there are few obstacles in the way to prevent an interested family from adopting her. She’s already fixed, walks nicely on a leash, loves other dogs and kids — the list goes on.

The only drawback? She’s going to need a tall fence.

Her story has made the rounds, though. Her very act of loyalty has made many potential adopters notice her — she’s her own best advocate!

The shelter has since received quite a few applications, and it looks like Cathleen is going to get a loving — and hopefully forever — family in the near future.

We’ve all heard of those cases before, and it’s easy to blame the owners without knowing the whole situation. Sometimes the reason can be attributed to poor planning, sometimes it’s finances, sometimes it’s unforeseeable and unavoidable circumstances.

Plenty of people who have read this story have had unkind words for Cathleen’s former owners, but others have offered to help out financially if money was the issue.

Fox 2 said it was “not clear why Cathleen’s family could no longer care for her,” and the Seminole Humane Society commented that “her original family loved her very much,” but also that “The City of Seminole is very pet oriented” and the “situation occurred because of the owner.”

Whatever the case, Cathleen clearly loved her family, so they must have done something right. A dog wouldn’t fight to get back to a place where she wasn’t loved and cared for.

We hope her new family has patience and love so that Cathleen can form new bonds and new loyalties, and have a place to really call home.

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