Rosie May the dog was lost for days after Ky. tornado. She’s now back with her owners.
Rosie May, a chihuahua mix dog, and her owners were rescued on Dec. 10 after a tornado demolished their Hopkins County home.
But Rosie May jumped off the ATV carrying them to safety and disappeared when a loud clap of thunder frightened her, Hopkins County Humane Society executive director Dustin Potenza told the Herald-Leader Friday.
Luckily, this week Rosie May became one of the dozens of pets in Kentucky displaced in the storm that are being reunited with their families.
Her owners, who had been admitted to the hospital for treatment, called the Hopkins County Humane Society every day from the hospital to see if Rosie May had been found, Potenza said.
A few days later, Potenza said, he heard that Rosie May may have gone back to the rubble of what was left of her home in Dawson Springs. He and the Hopkins Humane Society Board President Duane Snyder found her hiding there.
“We were able to extract her and bring her back to our facility, get her cleaned up. The owners were released from the hospital on the same day. We were able to reunite them,” said Potenza. Humane Society officials said it was hard to tell who was happier, Rosie May or her owner.
The Hopkins County Humane Society is housing displaced animals and boarding animals whose owners were displaced by tornadoes. On Friday, it had about 35 of those dogs and about 32 cats.
Since the storms, the shelter has taken in about 70 dogs and about 60 cats. About 45 percent of them have been reunited with their owners, Potenza said.
On Friday, Kentucky Humane Society official Kat Rooks said that about 100 cats and some dogs were being flown out of Kentucky and transported to shelters in other states that have room for them.
The private non-profit in Louisville is helping empty animal shelters from storm impacted areas so they have room to help animals displaced from the storms to be reunited with their families.
The Boston Globe reported that mostly kittens who had already been in Kentucky Humane Society shelters before the tornadoes were brought to shelters in Massachusetts Wednesday where they will be available for adoption.
They were moved so that Kentucky animal shelters affected by the storms have room to take in displaced animals.
The out-of-state transfers occurred because displaced animals need to stay at their county shelters so they have the best possible chance of being reunited with their families, Rooks said.
