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After having been missing for nearly two years, an elusive dog named Bella was finally caught with the help of a rescue group and a couple of good Samaritans and returned home to her worried mom, who never lost hope that they’d be reunited.
Farnaz Memarzadeh first noticed the stray dog in 2012, when she was wandering around the woods by University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
“I couldn’t ignore the situation — especially because it was right in front of me,” said Farnaz.
She called her Nadine, and tried to catch her, but could never get close enough. Over the summer, Farnaz contacted Duck Team 6, a rescue group that specializes in catching street dogs.
“Most of the time, I set up a trap, we catch our dog that day,” said Pat Rodriguez. “It might be a couple hours, but we catch our dog.”
Duck Team 6 spent two months trying to catch Bella, but to no avail. But on Tuesday, a maintenance worker from the medical center tried something no dog could resist – some KFC.
“He had a unique strategy that we had never tried,” Farnaz said. “He took Kentucky Fried Chicken — the crispy kind — and hung it from a string at the end of the trap, kind of like mistletoe from the ceiling.”
Now, most of us know that dogs aren’t supposed to be given bone-in chicken, because the bones can splinter in their digestive tracts, but desperate times call for desperate measures. One dangling drumstick and Bella was caught.
She was taken to veterinarian, who found she had ear mites and hookworms – but also a microchip. Her home was in Keller, TX, 37 miles away. Owner Melanie Barnes was delighted to receive the phone call she had waited so long for.
“It’s been a long time, sweetheart!” Melanie said to Bella during their reunion at Farnaz’s home. “It’s been a long time.”
No one knows how she managed to get all the way to Dallas after jumping the fence in her yard, or how she scavenged enough food to stay alive so long. Hopefully now she’ll stay home where she’ll be spoiled for the rest of her life.
