Missing dog’s owner never lost hope. Tearful reunion came 2 years and 1,000 miles later
A missing dog’s owner never lost hope — then he got emotional news.
Tony Duncan received a phone call telling him his beloved Luna was found about 1,000 miles from his Maryland home. He rushed to Florida for the chance to see her for the first time in two years.
“It was a long distance, but it had nothing in comparison to the love that I have for my dog,” Duncan told McClatchy News in a June 25 phone interview.
Then, the time finally came for Duncan to see his long-lost pup again.
“She just started running (in) circles, could hardly contain herself,” Duncan said. “I believe she was just as happy as we were. If I had a tail, I’d have been trying to wag my tail off as well.”
Luna’s journey started in April 2022, when she was living in Mardela Springs, Maryland, a roughly 100-mile drive southeast from Baltimore. Luna was accustomed to wandering Duncan’s rural property with her canine brother Trooper, but one day she was nowhere to be found.
“We waited and waited, hoping that she would come back,” Duncan said. “And she never did. So, we were completely devastated.”
Two years later, a stray dog was found roaming a Walmart parking lot in LaBelle, Florida, a roughly 150-mile drive southeast from Tampa. LaBelle Animal Control workers checked for a microchip, a device that stores owners’ contact information, director Douglas Morgan told McClatchy News in a phone interview.
When the shelter reached Duncan on June 19, it discovered he lived in Maryland and had never been to Florida. But he started driving to the state that same night so he and Luna could be back together.
“You could definitely hear in his voice the love ... and excitement that for one, their dog was still alive. And two, that they were getting her back,” Morgan said, adding that the reunion made Duncan and shelter workers tearful.
Luna — described as a friendly, “happy-go-lucky” mixed-breed dog — also couldn’t get enough of the reunion. A video shared with McClatchy News showed her frolicking with her owner and canine brother after she made it back to Maryland.
Though the shelter doesn’t know how Luna ended up hundreds of miles from home, it believes someone may have thought she was a stray and picked her up. Now, the shelter hopes people will get microchips for their pets.
“Without that microchip, this story would not happen,” Morgan said.
This story was originally published June 26, 2024 at 8:25 AM with the headline "Missing dog’s owner never lost hope. Tearful reunion came 2 years and 1,000 miles later."
