When Snuggles disappeared, Melanie Epperson believed she would eventually find him.
The small dog vanished while her family was moving into a new home. In the confusion, Snuggles ran away and never returned.
Melanie searched and worried, especially when winter arrived. Snuggles hated cold weather, and she could not stop wondering where he was sleeping or whether someone had found him.
Months passed.
Eventually, she accepted the possibility that she would never see her dog again.
Then 11 years went by.
The phone call sounded like a prank
In March 2025, Melanie’s daughter, Chantel Stroud, received an unexpected call from the City of Buffalo Animal Shelter in New York.
Someone had brought in an older dog.
Shelter workers followed standard procedure and scanned him for a microchip.
A name appeared in the records: Snuggles.
The contact information was old, but the chip also led staff to Chantel.
When the shelter employee asked whether she knew a dog named Snuggles, Chantel immediately remembered him.
She also could not believe what she was hearing.
Eleven years had passed since he disappeared.
Melanie thought her daughter was joking
Chantel called her mother with the news.
Melanie’s first reaction was disbelief.
She thought her daughter was playing a joke on her.
But the shelter had the dog, and the microchip confirmed what seemed impossible.
Snuggles was alive.
Nobody knows exactly where he spent the missing decade, who cared for him or how he eventually ended up at the shelter. Officials believe someone may have looked after him during at least part of that time.
What mattered most to Melanie was that he had finally been found.
Eleven years later, Snuggles came home
The reunion gave Melanie something she had stopped allowing herself to imagine.
The puppy she remembered was now an older dog, but he was still Snuggles.
“I just never thought I would ever see him again,” she told WKBW after their reunion.
Melanie immediately began thinking about the time they still had together.
After learning that dogs like Snuggles can sometimes live to around 18, she hoped they might have several more years together.
Eleven years of his life remain a mystery.
One tiny microchip, implanted before he disappeared, eventually connected those lost years back to the family waiting at the other end.
