Dog stolen 5 years ago met his family after passing 600 miles
One day Stephanie Moore-Malmstrom got a text that volunteers had found her dog, Sheba. The dog stolen many years ago lived in a town more than 600 miles away. At first, she thought it was a prank.
“My initial thought was, ‘Where’re my million dollars and my cruise?’” Moore-Malmstrom told The Dodo. “’Somebody’s scamming me.’”
A police officer identified Sheba via her microchip, but Moore-Malmstrom was still skeptical. As soon as Moore-Malmstrom saw Sheba through a FaceTime call, even though the pup was much older. She knew it was her dog.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, you have my dog, you have our baby,’” Moore-Malmstrom said.
With the help of Pilots N Paws, an organization dedicated to saving animals by flying them back to their families or to no-kill shelters, Sheba was soon in the air, heading home.
As Sheba stepped off the plane, Moore-Malmstrom was awestruck to be finally seeing her dog after so much time. Sheba felt so happy to see Moore-Malmstrom’s daughters and immediately rushed over.
“I experienced every emotion that you could begin to imagine,” Moore-Malmstrom said. “Sheba could not get to my girls quick enough.”
Finally safe in her family’s arms, Sheba was able to relax and bask in their love.
The Moore-Malmstrom family later deduced that after Sheba was stolen out of their Baytown, Texas, yard in 2018, she was taken to the Texas panhandle, where she was eventually adopted by a family, whom she lived with for four and a half years. When that family had to relocate and re-home Sheba, her new owners, having decided they didn’t want to care for her, left Sheba on the street. Sheba was living outside, being looked after by a local teen when an animal control officer found her and checked her microchip.
Moore-Malmstrom is so grateful for everyone who helped return Sheba, especially Borger Animal Control and Friends of Texas Panhandle Shelter Pets.
“So many people rallied together to get her home to me,” Moore-Malmstrom said.
Sheba seems very grateful to be back with her family. Though they’ve spent so many years apart, they’ll have the rest of their lives to make up for lost time.
