Deployed Soldier Discovers His Ex Gave His Dog Away, Then Gets an Amazing Surprise
You may have seen this story before, but it's a real warm and fuzzy one!
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John Russo is a hero. He went to Afghanistan in 2009 with the U.S. Army,
ready to sacrifice his life in service to his country, if need be.
The one thing he had to take care of before he left was to find someone
to care for his beloved American bulldog, Bones.
Bones had been a gift from Russo’s mother in 2008. Though they were no longer together,
Russo’s former girlfriend agreed to take Bones in during Russo’s deployment.
Russo then went overseas, convinced his dog was in good hands. As it turned out, Russo was wrong.
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Without telling him, sometime during his absence his ex moved and left no
forwarding contact information. Worse still, she decided she didn’t want Bones anymore.
Shockingly, she first tried having a veterinarian euthanize Bones. The vet refused
to put down a good and perfectly healthy dog. He insisted she instead surrender Bones
to the Flagler Humane Society in Palm Coast, Fla. She did so in September.
His ex didn’t reach out to Russo to tell him any of this.
Russo had only been able to see Bones a couple of times during his deployment,
when he was home on leave. Nevertheless, he had no reason to believe the woman
who’d committed to caring for his dog wasn’t doing so. That is, not until he got home.
“We were broken up before I left, but she was taking care of [Bones], so I thought,”
Russo told ABC News. “Then I got home and realized she had surrendered her.”
As any dog lover will understand, this had to be the worst possible homecoming news
a returning veteran could get. His former girlfriend could not be reached,
and he had no idea she’d given away his beloved dog.
A Miraculous Twist of Fate
“[Bones] was really depressed when she got here,” Flagler Humane Society development coordinator
Jeffrey Ritter told ABC News. “She actually lived in my office and not in the kennel and we took care of her
and got her rehabilitated. You could tell she had been really loved because she was one of the most
well-behaved dogs. I’ve never heard her bark and she was completely housebroken and could sit and shake on command.”
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“I don’t know why you would give up a dog like Bones,” Flagler Humane Society
executive director Amy Carotenuto told BuzzFeed.
Russo, a dog lover, sometimes browsed through animal shelter web pages,
just looking at the adoptable dogs there. He’d gotten out of the Army
earlier this year and returned home to Florida. He didn’t know how to find Bones,
but he sometimes browsed through the dog photos on animal shelter pages, just looking.
Perhaps it was time to bring a new dog into his life.
Russo was looking at adoptable dog photos in November when his heart almost stopped.
There it was — a picture of Bones on the Flagler Humane Society’s web page.
“Her face was there,” Russo told BuzzFeed. “It just popped right up.”
He immediately jumped into his car and drove to the shelter.
Never to Be Parted Again
Russo was a little worried that Bones might not recall who he is.
They’d barely seen each other for four years. That doubt vanished in an instant.
“When she saw me she lost it and I knew right then and there she remembered me
after four years of not seeing me. She jumped on me, licked my face and ran around in circles,” Russo told ABC News.
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“It was very heartwarming,” the shelter’s customer service representative, Katrina Geigley, told ABC News.
“When they brought her out to see him he just knelt to the floor and we were all just bawling our eyes out.
We’ve never seen this dog be so ecstatic to see someone. She ran and gave him this huge bear hug and was whining
and jumping all around. If my job has ever been worth it, it was in that moment.”
John Russo is now in training to become an EMT and firefighter. That’s not surprising.
A hero will always remain a hero. Thankfully, he and Bones got the best early Christmas gift
there could ever be — they got each other again.
