Anything is paw-sible.
A Queens family was reunited with their missing dog last week after finding the pup at an adoption event in Manhattan.
The family of five stopped by the Animal Care Centers of New York City adoption event at Union Square Park on Sunday and realized one of the pitbulls looked eerily similar to their Mocha, who had vanished five months earlier.
“We were in the city and we heard about this event and as we were driving we were like, let’s go check it out,” the lost dog owner, a husband and father who didn’t want to be named, told the Daily News.
“We had enough time and we decided to take a ride over there, and take a look, not expecting to find Mocha. Just take a look to see if we could find a puppy. And as soon as we walked in, she was right there.”
Mocha — who was wearing a blue “Adopt Me” vest — immediately perked her ears up and started jumping out of excitement upon seeing her family, which includes a 6-year-old girl and two brothers, aged 10 and 11.
She responded to her name, cementing the family’s suspicions that she really was their long-lost pup.
“My wife says ‘Hey, that looks like Mocha. I turn around, I take a glance and I said, ‘That is Mocha,'” the dog owner said. “That was the end of it. She answered to her name.”
Mocha had been living with the Animal Cares Center team under the name Sandy since she was found last month tied to a post near the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in East New York, Brooklyn.
During her stay, NYCACC volunteers noticed that Mocha’s “temperament was that of a true family dog.”
Mocha had gone missing after her family entrusted her to a dog sitter during their week-long vacation in January.
When they returned from their trip, they were unable to track down the phone call-dodging miscreant and soon realized the chances of seeing their beloved Mocha again were slim.
The young children were the most heartbroken, their father said.
“They kept asking me every day, ‘When are we gonna go get her?’ I didn’t know what to tell them,” he said.
Though the family visited the adoption center with the intention of browsing for a new pet, they never gave up hope that they would be reunited with Mocha — just two days before, one of the man’s sons asked if they could storm the thief’s home and get their pup back.
Luckily, the chance encounter brought the whole family together again and they were finally able to bring Mocha home after proving that they were her rightful owners.
Now the family looks forward to spending their summer getting Mocha back to her healthy lifestyle and spoiling her with her favorite food — raw meat.
“She looked exhausted. She lost a lot of weight,” the owner said. “I was hoping she was okay, that’s all I was hoping. She’s not dead. Being that this is a pitbull, they’re known to either use them for bait or fighting. I noticed that she wasn’t used in any of that. She didn’t have any scars or anything like that. That’s definitely a relief.
“I still hope that she ran away from the sitter, somebody then found her and tied her to the pole. That’s what I’m hoping happened.”
