A TALE OF TWO BASSETS

Five years ago, all the way back in 2007, there were these two basset hounds named Allie and Bama, and they had a happy home in Murfreesboro, TN.  Then suddenly one day, the two dogs vanished from their yard.  Their mom and dad, Brenda Travis and Tom Shields, looked everywhere for them, for a whole year.   But they never found a single trace of their beloved basset hounds.  Finally they decided that the dogs had been stolen, and they would never be seen again.

After a while, Ms. Travis and Mr. Shields moved to Wichita, KS, and they had a baby.  Then last week, a totally amazing thing happened.  Ms. Travis got a call from a woman at a shelter in Dallas, GA, and she said Allie and Bama were there at the shelter!  Someone found the two dogs in the parking lot of a tractor supply store on July 5.  Bama has a microchip, and there were three phone numbers on it.  Only one of the phone numbers still worked, and it was Ms. Travis's cell phone number.  So that's how the shelter called her.

A bunch of friends got together and started something named "Operation Sweet Allie-Bama," and they had a Facebook page and everything.  They all worked together to figure out how to drive the dogs from Georgia to St. Louis, where Ms. Travis and Mr. Shields came and picked them up.

When Allie and Bama saw their mom and dad, they ran right up to them because they remembered them and were very glad to see them again.  No one knows where the basset hounds were for the five years that they were missing, but they stayed together somehow, and they were fat and happy-looking when they were found.

©Brenda Travis

Now they are living in Wichita, and they are sure to have a good life there.  I just love stories with happy endings, don't you?