Tiny pup was missing for days hundreds of miles from home. Then her family sees photo
A 4-year-old Yorkie named Khloe is back home safely in Canada after going missing for nearly two weeks during a trip to Arizona, officials said.
A dispatcher for the Arizona Department of Transportation, or ADOT, helped save the pup by finding and following Khloe via traffic camera after officials got a report of a small dog on a freeway in the Mesa area, ADOT wrote in a Jan. 20 blog post.
Khloe was visiting Arizona with her humans, Carisa Leslie and Scott Butz, when she got loose Dec. 15 while being watched by a pet sitter, officials said.
Khloe’s family “searched day and night,” even laying eyes on her once, “but they were never able to catch up with the skittish pup,” officials said.
That changed Dec. 27 when officials got the report of the dog on the freeway, according to the blog post.
The report made its way to ADOT’s Traffic Operations Center in Phoenix, and dispatcher Kristin Godbehere spotted Khloe on a traffic camera, officials said.
The pup got off the freeway, and Godbehere — who’s a Yorkie owner herself — followed her using the cameras, officials said.
She also posted about the sighting in a Facebook group for lost and found pets that Khloe’s family also had been using in their search, according to officials.
When Khloe’s humans saw the photos, “they knew it was Khloe, who was still wearing the pink harness she had on when she went missing,” officials said.
She was 3-plus miles from where she’d previously been seen, officials said.
The family went to the freeway “to try and find the exact locations of where Khloe was standing in the pictures,” officials said, and as “they stopped to discuss whether they were in the right spot,” Khloe emerged from a bush.
“Leslie said so many things aligned to lead them to stand in that exact spot where they were able to finally get back their evasive pup, starting with the pictures and information Godbehere shared,” according to officials.
Khloe — who was tired, thirsty and hungry but otherwise in good shape — is now “adjusting very well back at home in Canada,” officials said.
Mesa is about a 20-mile drive east from Phoenix.
This story was originally published January 23, 2025 at 12:23 PM with the headline "Tiny pup was missing for days hundreds of miles from home. Then her family sees photo."
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