Dog lost in Florida turns up in Illinois
By Charles Sheehan, Tribune staff reporter.
December 15, 2006
Alice Baines could not find him on the block. She could not find him near the dock. She could not find him here nor there. She could not find him anywhere.
But two years after a hurricane blew down a back-yard fence in Florida and set free a golden retriever named Sam-I-Am, the wayward pooch was found in McHenry County.
In the most unlikely of reunions Thursday night, Sam-I-Am ran across the tiled floor at O'Hare International Airport and rested his head on the arm of owner Baines, who flew to Chicago from her home in Tampa to retrieve him.
"I can't believe it," she said. "This kind of thing doesn't happen."
Veterinarians in McHenry County were stunned as well when they discovered a microchip in the scruff of the dog's neck that placed his home more than 1,200 miles to the southeast.
"I've never seen anything like it," said McHenry County animal control officer Sean Graff.
`Have you got him?'
On Thursday night, Brett Baines, 9, waited in Florida for the return of his canine pal. The boy last saw the dog in 2004 after the hurricane ripped up a fence outside the family's home.
"He is so excited, I have 10 messages on my phone," Baines said. "Each one says, `Have you got him? Have you got him? Have you got him?'"
Just how Sam-I-Am made the journey from Tampa to Johnsburg, a small town on Pistakee Lake in McHenry County, may never be known.
A resident found the 5-year-old dog wandering along Circle Court earlier this week and took him to the McHenry County animal shelter.
Though few animal owners take advantage of relatively cheap microchip technology, veterinarians in McHenry County do a routine scan of all dogs brought to the shelter, said Dr. Edin Mehanovic, the animal control administrator.
McHenry County officials called the veterinarian who had placed the chip in Sam-I-Am when he was a puppy, whose office Baines said she had been calling on and off since the hurricane.
"I just kept checking and yesterday around 5 o'clock, they called and said, `We got a call from Illinois and we have a chip match,'" Baines said. "They said, `It's him, it's got to be him.'"
Baines booked the first flight to what she called "the Land of Oprah."
For all the mileage, it appears that Sam-I-Am is no worse for the wear.
"The dog is in very good shape," Mehanovic said. "I can't see how the dog could walk that far."
Microchip costs $40
Mehanovic and Graff said Sam-I-Am is a poster pup for microchip technology. Implanting a chip costs about $40, Graff said.
"This is a perfect example of what a microchip can do," Graff said. "A dog can lose a collar or someone can take it off, but the microchip never comes off."
Source: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2006-12-15/news/0612150156_1_microchip-technology-animal-shelter-dog
Other versions of the story at:
http://scoobyk9.blog.ca/2006/12/15/sam_i_am_home_for_christmas~1442432/
http://www.ocala.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061217/NEWS/212170345/1002/stateRSS&source=RSS&tc=ar
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