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After 4 years missing, Pearl the pug returns home |
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© Douglas Irving and The Orange County Register
SANTA ANA, CA – Pearl the pug rolled and wiggled on the summer grass, her tongue hanging from her mouth like a giant wad of stretched-out bubble gum. Her owner, Richard Rodriguez, patted her stomach and cooed, "Buddha belly, Buddha belly," just like he used to.
He has no idea where Pearl has been for the past four years. All he knows is that she vanished from his yard about a month after he brought her home, in 2005. And that the phone call he received this week from a Riverside animal shelter was so surprising he couldn't even make sense of it at first.
"We found your pug."
Rodriguez, 56, is a long-haul driver for UPS who's been known to rescue stray kittens from the road and bring them home. But he has a soft spot for little dogs with flat faces: "A lot of people find them ugly," he says, "but they've got that kind of ugly-cute."
He had always wanted a pug. And so, when he saw a little pure-bred puppy in the window of a Tucson, Ariz., pet store four years ago, he decided to just go ahead and buy her. He didn't even flinch at the $2,000 price.
He named her Pearl before he even got to the cash register. "It just seemed to fit her disposition," he says.
She used to fall asleep with all four legs in the air as Rodriguez rubbed her belly and sang to her: Buddha belly, Buddha belly. She won over even Rodriguez's wife, Josie, a self-described cat person: "We treated her like a baby, a human baby," Josie says.
And then, one day, she was gone.
She disappeared without a trace from the Rodriguez's walled-in backyard, and Richard and Josie have always thought that someone must have stolen her. They walked the neighborhood and put up "Missing Dog" signs, but the only call they got was from some kids playing a cruel prank.
Little by little, they stopped talking about Pearl every day, although they kept photos of her on a special disk. Richard got another pug as a Father's Day gift a few years later, a force of nature he named Beastie Girl.
That's why he was confused when his cell phone jingled him awake early Monday, and the voice on the line informed him that his pug was found. "My pug's in the backyard," he said.
No, the caller said, this pug was just picked up as a stray by a Riverside County animal-control officer. She had a tiny microchip embedded in her back. And that microchip led back to a pet store in Tucson, Ariz., which identified Richard Rodriguez as her owner.
Richard woke Josie: "They found Pearl!"
She had been through some hard years – they could see that as they approached her cage at the animal shelter. Her fur was matted with street grime, and she nipped desperately at fleas on her back.
Later, Richard would find an old scar on her head, and notice that her lower jaw looked crooked, as if she had been kicked. A shelter worker told him Pearl had been used as a breeding machine.
But he called her by name – "Pearl?" -- as he approached her cage, and he thinks she perked up a little. A worker asked if he wanted to take her home, and he said of course. Even after four years, he says: "It was just the bond, you know? I had to go get her."
"If they told me my dog was in Arizona, I would've taken time off work so I could go get her."
On Tuesday, Pearl sprinted around the backyard, rough-housing with Beastie Girl, her fur clean and blonde and her bubblegum tongue hanging out. She let Richard rub her stomach: "Buddha belly."
"I'm just glad to have her back," he said. "I just want to give her a good home. She's a good little dog."
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Posted on Tue Aug 18, 2009 2:21 am by PugNews |
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