CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE At present) – On the morning of Apr 2, Michael Joy, a Clarksville resident and veteran of the U.Due south. Army, received a phone call he and his family would never forget.

"I await at my phone and I'm getting a call from Cleveland, Ohio, and I don't know anybody in Ohio," Joy said.

Despite his normal practice of ignoring calls from unknown numbers, his intuition told him to answer.

"So I picked up the phone and the lady was like, 'Is this Mr. Joy?'" he said. "She was like, 'This is City Dogs of Cleveland. We found your dog Sam.'"

He was in disbelief. Sam had gone missing four years before when Joy'southward family was living in Georgia. The side by side mean solar day, the family unit loaded upward in their car and made the eight-hour drive from Clarksville to Cleveland.

Sam's story

Joy said he rescued Sam when he was agile-duty Ground forces, installed at Fort Benning in Georgia.

"Some family said he didn't want him. He was less than a twelvemonth erstwhile, and they couldn't handle him. I was like, 'You know what, I can handle dogs pretty well,' so I went and took them off of their hands," Joy said.

As shortly as Joy got Sam home, where they had ii other dogs, they began to work on obedience training for Sam to eventually become either a service dog or an emotional support animal.

A few months later, Joy was deployed.

"I had to go on a (temporary duty assignment), came back, and my wife and kids were similar, 'Hey, the dogs got out and at present we can't discover them,'" Joy said.

They were able to notice two of them, just Sam had disappeared.

Joy went on local Facebook pages to search and checked out every shelter in Columbus, Georgia, near Fort Benning.

But he didn't have that much time left in Georgia: He was set to be reassigned to Fort Campbell in six months.

"I still checked the pages, thinking maybe I'll go lucky and ane day he will show upwards," Joy said.

They had no such luck, and the family moved to Tennessee.

Sam the dog (Courtesy Michael Joy)

The reunion

On the morning of April ii, the Cleveland Sectionalization of Constabulary picked upwards a stray canis familiaris and left him in the care of the metropolis's Animal Care and Command, according to a argument from the City of Cleveland.

After the phone call from Cleveland alerting the family to Sam'south location, Joy's oldest daughter came in the room.

"She said, 'Dad, what was that?' And I was like, 'They found my dog,'" he said. His daughter then asked what they were going to do well-nigh it.

"I said, 'We're going to Ohio tomorrow,'" Joy said.

"On the drive, it took about eight or nine hours, I'grand looking at my wife and my kids and I just couldn't believe that was actually happening. This is like a dream," Joy said, adding that he was worried Sam wouldn't call up him. For i thing, Joy had since grown out his beard.

"As before long as he turned a corner, I remembered exactly who he was. He came upwards to me, and first he didn't recognize me, simply within 30 seconds, he remembered and he was happy. My wife and kids were crying," Joy said.

Joy said the experience reminded him of the feeling of getting home later a long deployment.

The other two dogs Joy had at the time have since passed; Sam was the youngest of the trio. In December 2020, Joy had just adopted another canis familiaris for his daughter: a chocolate lab he also named Sam.

"Sam was what I ever wanted my dog to be named from watching John Wayne movies as a kid," Joy said.

He began grooming the new Sam for his daughter and was in the middle of the process when he got the telephone call from Cleveland. The family at present has non i, but two Sams.

Sam the dog sleeping on the couch (Courtesy Michael Joy)

Cleveland mystery

It'due south however a mystery how Sam got from Georgia to Ohio. Just one matter is for sure: Sam and Joy are happy to be together once more.

"He's been inseparable. I'one thousand glad I'k retired considering it gives me and him some more time to bail," Joy said.

With the homecoming, the Joys now have five dogs. Sam regained a spot on the couch.

Joy said he's glad he had Sam microchipped when he was neutered.

"I go on telling people to get their dogs microchipped because I would have never found him if he wasn't. And I had totally forgotten he was even chipped," Joy said.

The shelter was glad for the microchip every bit well.

"One of the best parts of our chore at Cleveland Creature Care & Control is reuniting lost dogs with loving owners who have been looking for them," kennel managing director Michelle Harvanek said in a argument.

"We take a lot of pride in our efforts to trace microchips right away and making several attempts to contact owners. We also identify a huge emphasis on microchipping dogs. Every dog that leaves our care through adoption or return to owner is microchipped if they weren't already. This is ane of those very experience-good stories that make all of our difficult work worth it," Harvanek said.