One rescue pup loved her shelter so much, she traveled 10 miles for a late-night visit.
The recently adopted dog was missing for three days, with no luck in catching her despite efforts by the shelter and community. That is, until one day when employees at the Animal Rescue League of El Paso were notified via Ring doorbell in the middle of the night that someone was at the shelter’s front door. After grabbing their phones to check the camera, they were shocked to discover a familiar face at the door—their former shelter dog Bailey.
“That dog is probably more amazing than I can give her credit for,” Loretta Hyde, director and founder of the Animal Rescue League of El Paso, tells Daily Paws.
Bailey arrived at the rescue around a year and a half ago after being transferred from another shelter. Loretta Hyde, director and founder of Animal Rescue League of El Paso, tells Daily Paws that Bailey was very energetic when she first arrived—”very sweet but needed some manners.” So, Hyde enrolled her in an eight-week obedience training program that gives incarcerated people at a local jail the opportunity to train dogs from the shelter.
After the training, Hyde says Bailey was much better when it came to skills such as sit and down. However, she says the pup has always been “somewhat of an escape artist.”
The lively pup was first adopted three months ago, but unfortunately, the adoption only lasted three days after Bailey escaped her crate and ate part of an oil painting. It wasn’t bad news for long, though. Her lucky day came about a month and a half ago when she was adopted by a new loving owner.
All was going well until the end of January, when Bailey’s dad was putting a harness on her. She backed out of it and ran off. Her dad immediately contacted the shelter for help, and they posted Bailey’s photo on all its social media platforms. Hyde says she was spotted multiple times with no luck in catching her.
“[It] was weird because every time she was spotted or seen she was getting closer and closer to the shelter,” Hyde says. The shelter was 10 miles from where she first ran off.
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Bailey seemed to have a plan in mind because after being missing for three days, the pup miraculously showed up at her former shelter’s front door. An impressive feat, considering the long journey and busy streets she had to conquer to get there. She didn’t just show up in normal fashion, however—she arrived around 1:15 a.m. and activated the shelter’s Ring doorbell.
“We heard the doorbell ring, all of us have Ring camera on our phone that we can check from home because it was at 1 something in the morning when she decided to let us know that she was here,” Hyde says. “So the girls that work here got on their phone and saw a dog out front and said, ‘Is that Bailey?'”
The shelter employees confirmed the bell-ringing pooch was in fact Bailey after calling her name through the doorbell’s microphone. They then talked to the pooch through the microphone until they got to the shelter, where Bailey sat outside awaiting their arrival.
Staffers brought her inside for the night, where Hyde says the brainy canine “slept hard,” so much so that she was still fast asleep when they arrived at the shelter the next morning. She was a “happy camper” and very excited to see her old friends from the shelter.
Bailey is now back at home with her dad, where Hyde says she won’t leave his side. After a long adventure and now outfitted with a new GPS collar, it seems Bailey might be ready to retire from her escape artist ways.