We’ve all heard the stories about how animals have disappeared and then popped up thousands of miles away a few months later. Then there are those that detail how a pet ran away after a move and found its way thousands of miles away at its former home. Today we have a similar story with a twist. It all revolves around a New York City Beagle by the name of Rocco.  Rocco was deeply loved by his family, but through no fault of their own he strayed and after a while the puppy was considered among those living in that great dog park in the sky. A phone call from Hinselville, Georgia Liberty County Animal Control supervisor Randy Durrence however turned those tears into smiles for the Villacis’s, Rocco’s previous owners.

Now the amazing part of this story isn’t that Rocco showed up in an animal shelter some 850 odd miles from the Viallacis’s backyard in New York City. No the most amazing part doesn’t concern distance, but deals more with the amount of time Rocco had been away. You see last time 10 year-old Natalie Villacis saw her puppy she was….5!! For 5 years Rocco the beagle lived another life, possibly under another name, definitely with a new family, and after being dropped off at the Hinseville, Ga. Animal control center, just happened to be scanned with a microchip reader, which immediately showed New York and the address of the Villacis’s.