Most of us love our pets like family, and if we lost one of them, we would never give up looking until we found them. One man lost his dog and thought that he would never see him again. Bill Ballato was living in Rhode Island with his dog Bosco when the dog escaped.
Ballato looked for Bosco for a long time but never found him.
Everyone knew Ballato and Bosco, and when he put up flyers looking for the dog, he assumed someone would bring him back. He had to move a few months later. Sadly, he did so without Bosco. He never expected to see the dog again, but he did think about him often.
Ballato said:
“There were nights, horrible nights that I wondered, especially after big storms. But something told me that he’d make it.”
Then one day, two years after Bosco went missing, Ballato got a call from a friend.
His friend was a police officer who thought she spotted the dog. She wanted to catch him and help reunite him with Ballato.
A woman named Sheila Graham volunteers with Missing Dogs of Massachusetts. She decided to help, and she set a trap for the dog. It took some time, but she eventually captured the dog. She knew it was time to transport him to Ballato. Graham said:
“Bosco played a good game of chess. But I love chess, so it’s just a matter of narrowing down his playing field.”
Graham has assisted with many reunions between people and pets.
All of them had been local, though. Ballato wanted to get Bosco back, but he is disabled and was not able to make the trip. That’s when Graham decided she would make the 2,000-mile drive from Rhode Island to Colorado to deliver Ballato his long-lost dog.
Ballato couldn’t believe it. He had no reward money to offer her, but Graham wasn’t worried about it. She said that she was just happy to be able to help the man and his dog. She said:
“That’s the reward. It makes the 36 hours in a car worth it.”
When word got out that Graham had made the drive to reunite Ballato and Bosco, her friends wanted to help her get back some of the costs of the trip.
They created a GoFundMe account for her. Graham commented on the page, saying:
“Hi, everyone; so happy to have been able to assist … It was the right thing to do all around. Safety first. This was a huge group effort from the start … An amazing group of friends, animal lovers, strangers, etc. all wanting one thing. To get Bosco back home to his dad and 2 fur brothers… Thank you to each and every one of you. Those who assisted behind the scenes, during the transport, and raising the funds to care for Bosco’s surgery (first and foremost) …
“It was an amazing trip, weather tried to stop us, and it was nasty. Nothing could stop our determination to bring him home … Thanks again for everything … To keep up to date with Bosco’s continued journey, be sure to visit him on FB – Bosco’s Journey Home. We will be updating photos, stories, links about all of this once time allows. For now, Bosco is acclimating well. Way to go Team Bosco …”
Ballato is grateful for everything that Graham and the other volunteers did for him and his dog.
He is happy to have Bosco back with him. When he moved away without finding his beloved dog, he never expected to see him again. Thanks to some strangers, that wasn’t the case.
Ballato is now more careful with how and when he lets Bosco outside. He doesn’t want to lose his dog again. There aren’t too many people like Graham in the world, so the chances of another recovery and reunion are pretty slim.
Bosco’s journey became so famous that there is a Facebook page that follows it.
Everyone can see this amazing dog who was reunited with his owner and how it all happened. Thanks to Graham and others, Ballato and Bosco can live happily ever after.
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