A Volunteer Chain Reaction; Jaxx’s Journey Home

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On July 4th, 2014 a Chicago family’s dog, Jaxx, went missing from his yard. His family really missed him and wanted him home. Trying to think of ways to help find him, the family finally posted a picture of Jaxx on the Lost Dogs Illinois Facebook page asking if anyone had seen him.

Irene, one of the Lost Dogs Illinois volunteers, saw the family’s plea for help and remembered seeing a listing for a dog that resembled, Jaxx, on the Petharbor website. The listing she remembered on Petharbor was for a dog being held at Chicago Animal Care & Control and had been brought in the same day Jaxx, went missing. Irene checked back on the website, but the dog she remembered was no longer listed. Hoping it wasn’t too late to find the dog and confirm him to be Jaxx, she quickly opened the CACC Transfer Team Facebook page. Thankfully, CACC has a special group of volunteers that work with the dogs that are brought in. They allow them to run a Facebook page representing the dogs at CACC. They use social media as a tool to network the dogs to help find rescues groups, potential foster homes, potential adopters and another avenue that could allow a family to find their missing pet.

As luck would have it, the LDI volunteer did find a video of the dog she saw on Petharbor on the Transfer Teams’ page. Irene contacted her fellow LDI volunteers with a link to the video for a second opinion to see if they also thought the dog was a match for Jaxx.   The consensus was an overwhelming, “Yes!”.  Irene then was able to send the video to Jaxx’s family and they agreed that, indeed, that was their boy! Obviously, they wanted to know where they could come get him. The problem now was, it seemed that Jaxx was no longer listed on Petharbor because he had already been pulled by a rescue group and was no longer at CACC.

The volunteer chain reaction was already well underway. Through the work that LDI does, some of the volunteers have become friends with some of the CACC volunteers. LDI volunteer, Irene, asked another LDI volunteer, Jackie, if she could help locate Jaxx through her connections with the CACC volunteers.   Quickly, Angie, from the Transfer Team page was contacted. Immediately, the CACC volunteer jumped into action to try and find out where and to what rescue group pulled Jaxx. Lo and behold, Jaxx, was now with  Retrieve A Golden of Minnesota.   Yes, you read that right, Minnesota. Now what? The CACC volunteer asked if more pictures showing different views of Jaxx could be forwarded to her from the family while she gathered the contact information for the rescue. Angie was able to forward those pictures to the rescue and to Jaxx’s foster family. All parties agreed it was a match. Jaxx was now part of Retrieve a Golden and could be adopted out, but the rescue knew that getting Jaxx back to his original family was in his best interest. Now, how to go about doing that is something else that needed to be figured out.

To add another layer to this story was the fact that Jaxx’s foster family was not in Minnesota, they were in Iowa. Yep, Iowa! After dozens of emails, many texts and several phone calls, arrangements were made to meet Jaxx’s family at the Iowa border the following Saturday. The rescue also has volunteers that help drive different transportation legs when they need dogs transported for their rescue. One of those volunteers offered to pick up and drive Jaxx to the Iowa border for the impending reunion.

Jaxx’s family and all of the volunteers involved waited on pins and needles for the day Jaxx would finally be home sweet home. Finally, on the afternoon of July 26th, it happened. It was obvious that, Jaxx, had been well cared for while on his little adventure.   One final volunteer chain reaction happened while they passed around a picture of Jaxx riding happily home in his family’s car, smiling from ear to ear, looking fluffier than ever.

We, at LDI, would like to thank everyone involved in this volunteer chain reaction to get Jaxx back to his rightful family. Remember Jaxx didn’t need a new home; he needed to go home!