This Dog Twice Made A 20-Mile Trek To Go Back To A Family That Gave Her Up For Adoption

"I haven’t seen anything like this before."

This is Cathleen, a very, very good dog who managed to make the 20-mile trek back to a family in Oklahoma that couldn't keep her.

The Seminole Humane Society wrote on Facebook that the owners of Cathleen, a six-year-old Great Pyrenees mix, moved into a house in Seminole, Oklahoma, without a fenced yard several months ago, so her owners gave her to someone 20 miles away in Prague.

But Cathleen, still very much attached to her original owners, walked from her new home in Prague to her old one in Seminole at the end of December. Besides 20 miles being a very long haul on foot, the average temperature for December in Oklahoma City, which is 56 miles from Seminole, was 40 degrees, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Animal shelter manager Rebecca Acker told BuzzFeed News that the lengths Cathleen went to to get back to her original family were definitely an outlier.

"I haven’t seen anything like this before," she said. "She's probably traveled the most out of all our dogs."

An animal control officer picked up Cathleen in Seminole, where she has been waiting at the shelter for a third family. Marta Mattingly, the treasurer of the Seminole Humane Society, said she lives three blocks from Cathleen's original owners and saw the dog wandering the neighborhood multiple times after the owners sent their pet to Prague.

"I thought it was my neighbor’s dog. I tried to get her, but I couldn't, so I called Animal Control," she said.

After her two treks back to her original home in Seminole, Cathleen's owners in Prague gave her up to the Humane Society because they could not control her wanderings, Acker said.

"Her heart wants to be with them but they cannot keep her," the shelter wrote on Facebook.

For $25, Cathleen is now up for adoption, but this time at a home with a fenced yard. Mattingly said her organization has received calls from as far away as North Carolina from people hoping to adopt Cathleen.

Naturally, people on Facebook thought Cathleen was pretty great.

Some thought the original owners should make a change to keep what so many others long for.

And a lot of people wanted Cathleen to have all the blessings.

May the third time be the charm.


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