Bronwyn Mengering fondly recalls the moment she was reunited with her missing dog Thor at an airport in Nova Scotia last week.
“He was in his kennel at the airport and he was laying down all calm,” she told CTV News Channel on Monday. “I walked over and I said ‘Hey Thor’ and you could hear his tail hitting the side of the cage.”
Even after being separated for two years and by thousands of kilometres, Thor still remembered Mengering.
“When we opened it (the cage) up, he ran over and jumped up and licked my face,” she said.
Bronwyn Mengering pets her dog Thor, who was returned to her two years after being stolen, in Dartmouth, N.S. on Friday, August 19, 2016. (Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press)
The Bernese mountain-Australian shepherd cross disappeared in October 2014 when Mengering was 12 years old and living with her family in Fort St. John, B.C. Mengering said she let her dog out in the backyard one afternoon and an hour later he was gone. She still doesn’t know if her dog was taken or how he vanished that day.
“There was dog fighting going on where we were and so of course I assumed the worst,” Mengering said. “He never really went out of our yard so I didn’t think that he ran away.”
Thor was the family’s first dog and a Christmas present for Mengering. After desperately searching for months, the Mengerings moved to Windsor, N.S.
The family recently received a promising phone call that restored their hopes. Their former vet in B.C. told them that after two years, Thor had been found at a rescue shelter near High River, Alta. He was taken in to the shelter by a man who had intended to adopt him after finding him at a work camp. An ID tattoo on the dog’s ear helped identify him as the family’s lost pup.
Mengering said she was at home when she learned that their dog had been found safe.
“It was amazing,” she said. “I called my mom and I was crying because I never thought that we would get him back.”
Bronwyn Mengering plays with her dog Thor, who was returned to her two years after being stolen, in Dartmouth, N.S. on Friday, August 19, 2016. (Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press)
The family currently lives in a rental house that doesn’t allow pets so Thor is staying with their sister-in-law in Dartmouth, N.S. Mengering visits him regularly and receives daily updates on his well-being.
Mengering says she learned an important lesson about keeping the faith in a situation like this.
“Don’t give up your hope,” she said. “It’s hard because we didn’t know where he was but when we found out he was okay and that we could get him back, it was amazing.”
With files from the Canadian Press
