Judith Monarrez crumpled onto her kitchen floor and wept when the news arrived in an e-mail: Gizmo, her pet dog missing for nine years, had been found alive.
Monarrez was 28 and living with her parents in 2015 when Gizmo, then two years old, slipped past a faulty gate in the backyard of their home in Las Vegas.
The decade that followed brought a lot of change. Monarrez, now 37, moved into her own home, earned a master’s degree in English and began her teaching career in higher education.
Photo: AP
Throughout the years, she never stopped trying to find Gizmo, Monarrez said.
Now, she was climbing into her car to drive across town to meet Gizmo at an animal hospital.
Monarrez was later told that a woman had found the now 11-year-old dog and dropped him off at the vet, where they scanned his microchip, triggering the e-mail notification that sent Monarrez to her knees, crying.
Within hours of receiving the e-mail on Wednesday last week, Gizmo was back in his owner’s arms.
Monarrez called it “a miracle.”
“Hindsight is 2020,” she said. “I’m so glad I registered his microchip.”
Their reunion came as a new Las Vegas city ordinance requiring pet owners to microchip their cats and dogs is to take effect on Thursday next week.
Monarrez said on Thursday that Gizmo’s first week back at home has brought mixed emotions.
It is clear that the nine years they had spent apart had changed Gizmo, too, she said.
The 3.6kg Chihuahua had grown afraid of shadows, heights and birds, and Gizmo now walked with a limp.
Monarrez said that both of the dog’s eyes were also severely infected and some of his teeth were missing.
“Even though he looked so different, when I looked in his eyes I knew immediately it was Gizmo,” Monarrez said, recalling the moment they were reunited at the vet’s office. “And as soon as I said his name, he tilted his head and he didn’t stop staring at me.”
While Monarrez and her parents cannot stop thinking about what Gizmo endured after he went missing, their focus now is on addressing his health issues and “showering him with all the love that we were holding onto for all those years,” she said.
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