Judith Monarrez crumpled onto her kitchen floor and wept when the news arrived in an e-mail: Gizmo, her pet dog missing for nine years, had been found alive.
Monarrez was 28 and living with her parents in 2015 when Gizmo, then two years old, slipped past a faulty gate in the backyard of their home in Las Vegas.
The decade that followed brought a lot of change. Monarrez, now 37, moved into her own home, earned a master’s degree in English and began her teaching career in higher education.
Photo: AP
Throughout the years, she never stopped trying to find Gizmo, Monarrez said.
Now, she was climbing into her car to drive across town to meet Gizmo at an animal hospital.
Monarrez was later told that a woman had found the now 11-year-old dog and dropped him off at the vet, where they scanned his microchip, triggering the e-mail notification that sent Monarrez to her knees, crying.
Within hours of receiving the e-mail on Wednesday last week, Gizmo was back in his owner’s arms.
Monarrez called it “a miracle.”
“Hindsight is 2020,” she said. “I’m so glad I registered his microchip.”
Their reunion came as a new Las Vegas city ordinance requiring pet owners to microchip their cats and dogs is to take effect on Thursday next week.
Monarrez said on Thursday that Gizmo’s first week back at home has brought mixed emotions.
It is clear that the nine years they had spent apart had changed Gizmo, too, she said.
The 3.6kg Chihuahua had grown afraid of shadows, heights and birds, and Gizmo now walked with a limp.
Monarrez said that both of the dog’s eyes were also severely infected and some of his teeth were missing.
“Even though he looked so different, when I looked in his eyes I knew immediately it was Gizmo,” Monarrez said, recalling the moment they were reunited at the vet’s office. “And as soon as I said his name, he tilted his head and he didn’t stop staring at me.”
While Monarrez and her parents cannot stop thinking about what Gizmo endured after he went missing, their focus now is on addressing his health issues and “showering him with all the love that we were holding onto for all those years,” she said.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
RSS