FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — When Frankie Pruitt came home from school for the holidays, he stopped on the way up the driveway to hug his pit bull, who had run to him with her tail wagging. “Petunia!” he said, rubbing the fur around her ears and looking into her brown eyes.
“Same eyes,” he said. “Same old Petunia!”
He hadn’t seen the dog since 2003, when she ran out of the house one morning but didn’t come back.
Perhaps a million pets get lost every year, and about 3.7 million are killed at shelters. Petunia beat the odds. She was found in a wilderness area 2,700 miles from her Virginia farm and sent home.
Eight years ago, Kristen and John Pruitt and their children worried that their friendly, affectionate American Staffordshire terrier had been hit by a car. Instead, their dog embarkeded on a cross-country trip. All they know for sure is that she was found wandering in the foothills of a wildlife preserve in Northern California, got picked up by a wildlife biologist, then jetted home.
Frankie Pruitt was 7 when his dad passed a sign for puppies and decided to take one home. He told Frankie not to tell his mom. They had plenty of room for another dog on their 100-acre alpaca and horse farm near Fredericksburg. But Kristen Pruitt said she didn’t want a pit bull in the house with her children; it seemed too dangerous. “Then I saw her, and she was so small, and so ugly, and so cute,” she said.
And sweet: That’s why they named her Petunia.
The sandy-and-white dog slept with Frankie, wiggling up to his pillow during the night. She ran free, following him around the place, an old family farm that played a role in the Civil War battle of Chancellorsville, with a pond, tall magnolias and horse fences crisscrossing the fields.
Then one morning around Thanksgiving Petunia and two other dogs ran out before breakfast. Only two came back.
A few days after Thanksgiving this year, Meg Eden, a wildlife biologist from Oregon, was camping in the Spenceville Wildlife Area in California. I
Eden, who rescues dogs, had just a moment’s hesitation because it was a pit bull. But the dog seemed so delighted to see her.
Eden called an animal shelter, which began searching for an owner. In this rare case, it was easy: The Pruitts implant microchips in all their animals.
The Pruitts’ vet called them. Frankie didn’t believe it until he saw a photo. Petunia!
Then Petunia went big time, appearing in local papers and on national TV when Fox News Channel paid to fly her back East.
But as soon as they got back to the farm and let her out of the car, Petunia seemed to know she was home.
The other day, they opened the door and Petunia trotted out, headed toward the alpaca barn. “Frankie!” Kristen Pruitt called, leaping forward to grab her collar.
Petunia looked back at her, tail wagging.
“Get her leash!”
