‘Been so long, but it’s amazing’: Family reunites with dog years after losing him

RADFORD, Va. (WDBJ/Gray News) - A family reunited with their dog after losing him in 2021.

Emalee Boyd found Romeo at the Radford Animal Shelter in Virginia, and said that finally, their family feels whole again.

Boyd said that she does not feel like she has always had the best luck, but finding Romeo proved her wrong.

“It was very surreal, I guess you could say, because it’s been so long, but it, it’s amazing, I love him so much,” she said.

Romeo joined the Boyd family in 2019.

“He was our quarantine puppy, and he did everything with us,” she said.

In 2021, Romeo was spending the weekend with another family, and Boyd never saw him again until she was scrolling on Facebook and saw a photo of him at the Radford Animal Shelter, just 30 minutes from her home.

“I immediately called the first thing in the morning, and it was the weekend, so I bombarded them the whole weekend,” she said. “They eventually got back to me and told me I was welcome to come by and take a look.”

Boyd said their connection was immediate.

“He was kind of like creeping in through his outside door and didn’t really react until she let him out. When she let him out, he was in my face,” she said. “His behavior during, I guess his stay at the shelter, he seemed down. They said he was kind of moping around, not really doing much of anything but [a shelter employee] said he’d been a happy boy when I came and seen him.”

Boyd wants others who have lost their pets to know that they might also have the same luck she did.

“I definitely did not expect him to remember me the way he did. All kinds of animals that end up in these shelters, they remember. They remember their owners, they remember the people that love them so,” she said.

Romeo is happy to be back home.

“I love that I make him happy, or the situation he’s happy in. Whatever it is, he’s happy,” Boyd said.