LONG EDDY  – Most lost dog stories – especially ones that are three years and four months old –don’t have a very happy ending.

But Ralph is no ordinary dog and Gary Peake is no ordinary owner and somehow, someway they both found each other again after each had given up hope.

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The story starts  in November of 2020 when Ralph and his sidekick, Beagle, made their weekly two-mile jaunt from Gary Peake’s mountaintop home to Rasberry Park Rd. in Long Eddy to visit Jack.

You see ‘Jack,’ an eight-point buck, was Gary’s pet deer and Ralph and Beagle liked to play with him.

“Jack hated flies and would spend all summer in my bed,” Gary said. “It was great waking up with that 8-point buck and two beagles in my bed. Nobody could believe it.

“But when summer was over he [Jack] decided to move to Rasberry Park.”

So after Jack moved to downtown Long Eddy, Beagle and Ralph had no alternative but to go visit him.

“Every week Beagle and Ralph would walk down to Long Eddy to visit that damn deer,” Gary said. 

But being that Jack moved off Gary’s hill not everyone knew him and one day the buck got shot with a bow and arrow.

“Doc gave me medicine to put on his wound and we healed him up,” Gary said.

“But then he got run over by a car in Long Eddy and he was gone,” Gary said. “I was really sad.”

It wasn’t long after, that Ralph and Beagle were out on one of their walks and Ralph didn’t return.

“We hung up signs everywhere,” Gary said. “We had posters out, and looked for him for months.”

Days turned to weeks and weeks to months and still no Ralph.

Gary’s friend, who knew how much dad loved his dogs, brought a little surprise home on Thanksgiving of 2020, a new beagle named Bailey.

And poor Beagle, who was getting up in age and suffering from cancer, passed away.

Gary still had a lot of animals to keep him entertained but he missed his pup, Ralph.

Then, last week the phone rang.

It was the Okeechobee County Animal Control Off-ice in Okeechobee, Florida.

“We have a dog here that is registered as missing,” the Okeechobee Animal Control Officer said.

“Oh my God – you found Ralph,” Dawn Ross, Gary’s friend, replied.

“Does he want the dog back?” the officer asked.

“God yes!” Dawn replied.

“If you hadn’t registered him you never would have gotten him back,” the officer explained.

“We’ll come to you,” Dawn said.

But now there was one little problem.

Ralph was still 1,250 miles from Long Eddy.

Gary’s wife, Carol and daughter Dolcie, who were in Charlotte, NC, said they would drive the 900-mile round trip to pick him up.

Dawn and her son then had to drive the 1,600 mile round trip from Long Eddy to Charolotte to get Ralph home.

On Monday afternoon Ralph was back in Gary’s house.

“The first thing he did was go right to the toilet to get a drink,” Gary said, noting that is what Ralph always did. 

The reunion was a happy one as Gary and Ralph were reacquainted and there were hugs and kisses all around.

Now Ralph and Bailey spend a lot of time laying around, resting in the warm sun by Gary’s side door or on the chair with an afghan, right next to Gary.

A doggie door allows the beagles to go in and out as they please.

“It’s amazing,” Gary said. “If Ralph had been trying to get home he’s been going the wrong way.”

But now he’s home, where he belongs. Ready to make new friends with the deer and bear in Gary’s Animal Sanctuary.

“I love critters,” Gary said.

Addendum

Luckily, Ralph had a chip installed by veterinarian Dr. Joe Nebzydoski and that is how Ralph got returned to Gary.

After he got home, Ralph also got a GPS tracker on his collar so Gary and Dawn can actually locate him.

“He’s 14 feet away,” Dawn laughed as she looked at the APP on her phone.

Gary believes someone probably picked up Ralph along the road, and not seeing anyone nearby, took him ‘home,’ back to Florida.

Ralph then went to Okeechobee, Florida, where he’s been enjoying the sunshine for the past 40 months, before he got loose and was picked up by the Animal Control Office.

“They found him wandering the streets,” Gary said.

Yesterday, Ralph visted Dr. Nebzydoski again for his rabies shot and a very happy reunion.

He was overdue, of course.