A Laval, Que. woman’s search for her German shepherd named Boomer has ended in a heartwarming reunion after a couple on Kijiji allegedly ‘scammed’ her into giving them her dog and selling him only days later.

Rachel Lariviere was reunited with her two-year-old dog following three weeks of searching, when an Ottawa couple came forward to return him. Video of the moment Boomer saw his owner again shows him straining at his leash with excitement to see her.

“I wouldn’t stop until I found him,” Lariviere told CTV News Ottawa.

She said the ordeal started when she found an online Kijiji ad promising a free home for a dog.

“It was offering paradise for dogs, 67 acres, unconditional love, we could visit him many times,” Lariviere said.

She didn’t want to give up Boomer, but the pressures of life had started to build, and she wasn’t sure they could keep up with the needs of a large dog.

“We love him terribly, it’s just nowadays we live 100 miles an hour,” she said. “It’s just me and the kids. I’m trying to put the kids through school.”

She said she was told that Boomer would have a better life with more space to run around, and that her family could still visit him.

A screenshot of the ad that Lariviere says she answered reads, in all caps: “If you want a great home for your dog, we will take him or her for free, and offer all the love and freedom they would ever want!!!!”

So she drove out to a large estate in Sainte-Barbe, Que. and dropped Boomer.

Lariviere said that she verbally agreed to do a one-week trial period, before making a final decision, but it only took three days for her to realize her family needed Boomer back.

“He’s our dog,” she said. “What are we doing? He belongs with us.”

But when she tried to get Boomer back, she said the Sainte-Barbe couple behind the ad told her that they had already sold him.

“I was floored, I started bawling my eyes out,” Lariviere said. “I said: ‘You can’t do this. That wasn’t the deal.’”

CTV News Ottawa has reached out to the couple behind the Kijiji ad, but have yet to receive a response.

Lariviere said the couple hung up, and stopped taking their calls. When she tried to contact police, she was told it “was a civil matter,” she said, because it was “their word against mine.”

It was then that she **believed she had been scammed and embarked on a quest to find Boomer.

“I put it on Kijiji, everywhere; I did 500 vets, 250 pet stores,” Lariviere said.

Pictures of the German shepherd were plastered over social media, and the story of Boomer, the stolen dog, was shared across Canada.

Finally, Lariviere received a call from an Ottawa couple who said they could return her dog. They’d mistakenly purchased Boomer, without knowing that he was stolen, she said.

“They were scammed also,” Lariviere said. “(I’m) very happy that they were honest enough to call us.”

She reimbursed the couple for what they paid for Boomer. Although they were upset, Lariviere said, they told her they understood.

Lariviere, who describes herself as a “very trusting person,” said that “even though I’ll think twice about trusting again, I think that my faith was kind of restored,” by the Ottawa couple’s honesty.

“I couldn’t thank them enough, because we got our Boomer back.”

With a report from CTV Ottawa