Baby
Return to Me
Chris Harris, an NYU law student, was visiting Florida in late February when he got a call from his dog sitter that his five-year-old dog, Baby, had escaped. “It was overwhelming,” says Chris, who worried about how his pampered pup would survive on the streets of Brooklyn. “She’s like a little person in a dog’s body,” he says. “She won’t even eat a treat if it’s touched the floor.”
Distraught, Chris immediately called Baby’s microchip company, and upon returning to New York, he searched shelters and the Internet for his beloved pet. But after weeks had passed, Chris began to fear the worst.
Cut to a cold March night in Manhattan: ASPCA Adoption Center Senior Administrator Lindy Linder was getting ready to leave work when she saw a young woman with a dog waiting in the lobby. The woman had found the small, mixed-breed dog tied up outside, and she knew the ASPCA could help. It was past eight o’clock—the city shelter was closed and Intake team members had gone home—so Lindy called Senior Intake Manager Ben Li’Gon on his cell phone and together they improvised a solution. Animal Care Technician Jonathan Aguero would set up a temporary enclosure for the pooch, who was given the name Lindy.
The next morning, “Lindy” was examined and found to be healthy and microchipped. The microchip company was quickly notified, and “just as I was internally crowing about a dog having been named after me,” says Lindy (the human), “the most wonderful of outcomes occurred”: Our Intake desk received an emotional call from Chris, who couldn’t wait to retrieve his dog.
When Chris entered the Adoption Center, Baby “jumped up on two legs—she was so excited!” Chris says. “Everyone said, ‘She wasn’t acting like that before!’” Chris, “was in tears throughout the whole release process,” Lindy says.
“We were all so moved,” she adds. “My only teeny, tiny regret was the departure of a dog so briefly named Lindy!”
For more stories of furry fate, please visit our Happy Tails Archive.