Lost Texas Dog Found Five Months Later In Atlanta

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ARLINGTON (CBSDFW.COM) - For anyone who has moved, you know how easy it is for things to get lost.

So as Amanda Benton and John Sipes were moving boxes and furniture out of their Arlington, Texas home in September, you can probably understand how their five pound Chihuahua, named Coco, could have slipped out the door.

What Benton and Sipes still don't completely understand even now is what happened next.

"We looked all over the neighborhood for Coco," Benton said. "We put up flyers, went up and down the streets, posted messages on Facebook, called the veterinarian, called the animal shelters."

After months of searching for their dog without even a sniff of her whereabouts, Benton and Sipes said they began to think they would never see her again.

"We almost started giving up a little bit of hope," Spies said.

"But we were still praying about it, though," added Benton.

Then, this week, five months after Coco went missing, Benton received a phone call.

It was the Humane Society in Atlanta, Georgia.  One of its volunteers had found their dog more than 800 miles from where she ran away five months prior.

"I was just in tears crying I was so happy," Benton said.

The very next day Benton boarded a plane for Georgia.  The Atlanta Humane Society paid for the airfare.

Benton and Sipes said they don't know how their dog ever ended up in Atlanta, and likely never will.

What they do know, the couple said, is had it not been for the electronic microchip they put in Coco years ago, they would have never seen her again.

"Who expects to get their dog after five months and nearly a thousand miles away?" Sipes said.

To which Benton said, "But we did.  Thank God."

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