Angie, shih tzu

City dog, lost on Staten Island for over a month, reunited with owner
Contributed by Stephanie Slepian
October 09, 2008

Angie's a city dog, but she has the instincts of a country hound. The 11-pound, silky-furred Shih Tzu from an East Village pad persevered in the wilds of Clay Pit Pond State Park Preserve for 32 days. And despite the lice and the ticks, Angie is back to being Angie. Not bad for the runt of the litter.

Angie with her owner, Paul O'Neill and his sister, Doris O'Neil Cabrera.

Angie, an 11-pound Shih Tzu, was able to survive on her own for 32 days in Clay Pit Pond State Park.

"She's so bony and skinny, I don't know how she survived out there," said Paul O'Neill, her Manhattanite owner, who had dropped Angie off for dog-sitting at his sister's Rossville home before a vacation to Puerto Rico.

O'Neill spent a few days with his sister, Doris O'Neill Cabrera, before saying his goodbyes to Angie, and her mother and father, Amy and Archie, on Sept. 2.

That evening, Mrs. O'Neill Cabrera took the dogs, along with her own, into the backyard, where Angie manifested a new trick: She could go underneath the deck and come out the other end. That also might have been the means for her great escape.

"She lives in a small Manhattan apartment," Mrs. O'Neill Cabrera said. "She doesn't get outside much. Her only freedom is in my backyard. I had them in the grass in the backyard. She was so happy."

Mrs. O'Neill Cabrera went inside for about 10 minutes, and when she returned, Angie was gone.

Her brother raced back from Manhattan and 25 neighbors banded together with flashlights, searching the neighborhood and its woods. Over the next few days, they put up posters on utility poles, in supermarket windows. The entire community became invested in finding the lost dog. But there was no trace of Angie.

Heartbroken, O'Neill went on vacation, convinced he would get a call that "his baby" had been found. He returned home, but Angie didn't.

He never lost hope -- and on Friday, his phone rang.

"This is your Angie," said the voice on the other end. Three men -- who recognized the dog from the missing posters -- had pulled her out of a thorn-filled ditch in Clay Pit Pond State Park and brought her to the Animal Care and Control shelter in Charleston.

She lost about 3 pounds, her coat had to be shaved to remove the ticks and lice and she was running a fever, but she knew O'Neill in an instant.

"When she saw me, she got really excited," he said. "When I started calling her name, she came right to me."
If only she could tell him how she did it.

"That would be something," O'Neill said. "If she could just point out where she went and where she stayed."

Either way, she answers to a new name now: Angie Angel.

Source: http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2008/10/city_dog_lost_on_staten_island.html