Family’s dog went missing during a house fire—one small detail made their reunion possible after 6 years
Some technological innovations might be better than what people give them credit for. A family learned that about microchips after they were reunited with a beloved family dog after six years. It all began when the family, Lisa Nicholson, her husband and kids, lost their house to a fire and had to give their dog, Bella, to a friend as they dealt with the devastating event. They learned that the friends had given Bella away, too, after some time and had no way of knowing her whereabouts. Until one day, when they got a call, per Good Morning America.
The Nicholson family had to give Bella away only months after they adopted her because of the house fire that forced them to move out. "We lost everything. We lost our clothes. We lost everything that the house had inside of it. And so, we had to live in a hotel for a period of three months and during that time, that's when we had to decide where Bella was going to go and so we decided to let Bella go with a friend," Nicholson pointed out. But after the friend gave Bella away, too, the family had no way to find her. Years had passed since the incident, but then Nicholson's 18-year-old daughter, Liberty, recently had a dream about Bella. Coincidentally, Nicholson received a phone call from the Fort Lauderdale Police about their lost dog soon after.
"I just said, 'This has got to be God here,' because … my daughter has a dream and then all of a sudden the dog appears after about six years? Like, it's a dream come true," the mom admitted. Bella had been found by Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue firefighters on August 5. Soon after that, the department's public information officer, Frank Guzman, explained that the first responders found Bella because they had received a 911 call about a lost dog who had gotten stuck in a canal and couldn't get out. "Our firefighters from Engine 47 arrived on scene and made contact with the dog. She was very docile and obviously exhausted." The team brought the dog back to the firehouse and the police discovered that she was microchipped.
Bella had been adopted from Broward County Animal Care in 2018 and could be tracked down to Nicholson. "Bella was microchipped. And so anybody out there that does not believe that they work, they truly, truly work. That was how [the police] were able to locate us, through the microchip, because they had all of our information," the elated woman expressed after being reunited with her dog. The couple and two of their kids drove over 200 miles from St. Cloud, Florida, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to meet their dog once again. Nicholson hoped to give Bella everything she had missed out on during all these years.
"I feel like she's been through so much and I feel like this is like a second chance at life. She'll be treated just like us. When we get steak, she's going to get steak. When we get a new shirt, Bella is getting a new outfit," Nicholson went on. "I want people to understand that when people are able to get their dogs back [after] any situation, don't think bad of them, because we suffered too. We were heartbroken too, but now our hearts have been mended."
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