Pit bull from California reunited with owners 300 miles away
SALEM, Ore. — The odds were stacked against Jeanette Pulley and Jake Crager.
The Crescent City, California couple's 89-pound pit bull-type dog, Bobwire, escaped from their yard almost two weeks ago. For days, they combed the streets of their neighborhood, put up posters, offered a reward — and just about lost hope.
But when they thought Bobwire was gone for good, Pulley and Crager got a phone call from a relative who'd seen a picture of the dog online. He was up for adoption at the Marion County dog shelter in Salem, Oregon.
After a frantic phone call and hurried drive, the couple reunited with their beloved pup Monday evening — nearly 300 miles from their home.
From California to Oregon
Bobwire disappeared from the couple's yard sometime on Sept. 11, while Pulley was away on a trip in Nevada.
Crager recruited about half a dozen friends to scour the area in their cars.
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"I went up and down every street, railroad and parkway looking for him," Crager said. "We couldn't find him."
When Pulley returned home Tuesday, the couple alerted Del Norte and Humboldt counties in California and Curry County in Oregon and they handed out fliers with a $1,000 reward. But every call she received was a dead end.
"It was one heartbreak after another," Pulley said. "I was devastated. I just kept crying. I went to sleep crying."
It's unclear how Bobwire ended up hundreds of miles away in Salem, but the working theory is that he hitched a ride. The couple said the fence of their property runs along Highway 101, so it was likely someone picked him up off the road.
Melissa Gable, director of Marion County Dog Services, said the brown-and-white-spotted pittie came to the shelter on Sept. 13 after a woman found him standing next to a car near the Willamette Town Center shopping mall.
The dog didn't have a tag attached to his harness and wasn't microchipped, but immediately won over the hearts of the entire staff.
"When he came in, the samaritan who found him — he jumped right up into her car. He's super friendly, just the sweetest thing," Gable said.
When Gable took him out last week with volunteers, he got excited and ran for 10 feet and then he was like, 'yeah, I'm done.'
The staff eventually called him "Rhino" because of his size.
"We could've gone with hippo, too," she said, laughing.
Dog-lovers on social media fell in love with him, as well. After he wasn't claimed, the shelter put Rhino up for adoption on Sept. 16 and quickly received three applications.
Dogs without any form of identification can legally be held for up to three days at the shelter before the county takes ownership and can put the dog out for adoption, she said.
Staff got him neutered, de-wormed, microchipped and vaccinated for rabies and Bordetella.
"Our goal is, we don't want the dogs to sit here," Gable said. "We want to get them out as soon as possible because a dog that moves through the system quickly is less likely of getting sick, suffering mentally from being in a shelter."
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An adoption announcement about Rhino Sunday morning on the shelter's Facebook page quickly garnered more than 200 likes and shares.
But nobody thought it would resonate more than 300 miles away.
About 24 hours after the post published, Pulley got a call from her sister, who lives in New Hampshire. She told the couple she found the shelter's post about Bobwire and forwarded the link to Pulley and Crager.
"When I got off the phone, I … fell down crying," Pulley said. "To get word that he was only a state away — from the East Coast — it's craziness. I'm so happy that he's found."
And on Monday morning, Pulley and Crager began the drive from Crescent City to Salem.
"We never thought in a million years he'd be all the way up here … that's almost to Washington," Crager said.
'Momma's boy'
Pulley and Crager say Bobwire, who's 3 and 1/2 years old, is a "momma's boy."
When Pulley's gone, "he'll sit there and look out the window and lift up the blind with his head so it's over the backside of his head and howl," Crager said. "You'll open the door so he can go out … and he'll come outside, look around … and then go back in and howl."
"Me and him have been through a lot together," Pulley said.
Crager and Bobwire's family history spans two generations — Crager's dad owned Bobwire's dad, Ratchet.
If you're wondering how he got his name, the couple said it's because he would chew on a circle of barbwire in the shop when they first brought him home.
Bobwire fends off bears and elks from the family's fruit trees and likes nipping at the family's cows.
Bobwire is an avid cuddler, a fierce protector and quite loud snorer. And in case you're wondering, he loves knotted rope toys.
'You're going home'
Gable said reunions between dogs and their humans are not unusual. What's unique to this case is that they were able to find each other from a state away.
In 2019, for example, the shelter took in approximately 1,515 dogs and of those, 804 were returned to their family. In 2020, 581 dogs out of 1,024 taken in were reunited with their owners.
Gable said it's important for owners to license their pets and supplement any form of identification with a microchip — and keep contact information up to date.
"That's truly the best way for us to reunite them with their families because if they're not ... wearing any form of identification, we have no way of (knowing)," Gable said.
"The reality is, even if you feel like your dog will never, ever leave your yard, that licensing money comes back and helps the dogs at the shelter," she added. "How about doing it to help a dog that does (need to be licensed) — that is in the shelter — because that truly does help us reunite pets with their owners."
On Monday evening, the family squeezed and kissed their spotted pup in a tearful reunion.
As the family signed his adoption paperwork, Bobwire, who was slumped on the floor of a vestibule, peered back through the door into the shelter and looked back at the couple.
"Don't worry, bud," Crager said, "you're going home."
Follow Virginia Barreda on Twitter: @vbarreda2.