Family is reunited with missing dog after 11 years
A San Antonio family was recently reunited with a lost dog in Conroe after almost a dozen years apart after the pooch was rescued from the streets.
Angela Surrett got a phone call on April 7 about Vader, her black-coated male shar-pei and Labrador retriever mix, being housed at the Conroe Animal Shelter. The dog’s microchip still had her active phone number all these years later.
“I do believe the universe works in strange ways and that things are meant to happen,” Surrett said. “He’s meant to be here. He’s meant to live out the rest of his days being very spoiled and loved.”
She and her daughter lost the dog in 2011 when he was around 9 months old after her then-husband — without their permission — gave the pup away to a person unknown to them.
“We always loved him. He’s just the sweetest, goofiest, silly little dog,” Surrett said.
Animal shelter employee Lauri Nettles sent Surrett photos of Vader, who was malnourished and underweight with his ribs and backbone showing. His back legs were weak, and his nails were extremely long.
But the shelter could hold him for only three or five days, and there were no foster or rescue homes available to take him in, Surrett said she was told.
“Whatever his journey was, I felt responsible because if he had lived with me that whole time, he would have been cared for, he would have had a great life,” Surrett said.
That same day, Surrett and her daughter, Marti, 19, made the almost four-hour drive to Conroe to retrieve Vader. The dog seemed to recognize his original owners.
“He was glad to see them. He perked up a little bit” and wagged his tail “best he could,” Nettles said.
An “ecstatic” Marti cried upon seeing the dog she had lost when she was only 8, her mom said, adding, the young woman is now “always smothering him with kisses and hugs.”
Vader has since seen a veterinarian, who told Surrett that based on his condition, the pooch was likely living on the streets for a year or more.
His health has made an “amazing” transformation in two weeks’ time, Surrett shared, now that he’s receiving proper care, had some dental extractions done and is on medication for his leg pains.
“All we can do from here on out is make it up to him. He’s just settled right in. It’s almost as if he never left, except he’s now a little old man” with gray on his face, Surrett said.
Vader is getting along with the family’s other pets, which include two rescue greyhounds, a shiba inu and a chihuahua. Pepper, a 17-year-old cat the Surretts owned when they had Vader as a pup, rounds out the four-pawed clan.
“Chip the dogs,” Surrett advises pet owners.
“If you can adopt, adopt. If you can’t adopt, foster. If you can’t foster, then you can volunteer your time or donate money or food or bedding or whatever local shelters need.”