Woman Reunited with Lost Dog Weeks After He was Thrown from Vehicle
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Most of the time, there are few things happier than a story about a person being reunited with their beloved pet. However, those types of stories are sometimes born out of tragedy. Such is the case with this one, a story about a one-year-old Labradoodle named Bentley and his quest to be reunited with his owner.
It all started innocently enough. Twenty-one-year-old Samantha Orr was driving in a car with her mother, Jennifer and their dog on a winding mountain road near Pueblo, Colorado. It was a beautiful day and they were out to make the best of it, enjoying a nice drive and engaging in conversation. All of a sudden, something went terribly wrong. Things happened so quickly that Samantha still isn’t certain exactly how it happened, but she does remember the car plunging off the side of the road. It went straight down a 600 foot cliff, coming to rest at the bottom of the mountain.
Somehow, Samantha survived the terrible ordeal but sadly, her mother was killed in the accident. When Samantha awoke, she also realized that Bentley was missing. She had no way of knowing where the dog had gone, or even if he was alive or dead. She was critically injured and once rescuers were able to get her out of the car, she had to be flown in a helicopter to a hospital. While she was staying there, her thoughts kept going back to the accident again and again. She continued to think about the loss of her mother and wondered if Bentley was out there in the mountains somewhere, lost and confused. She wondered if she would ever see him again but she decided then and there that as soon as she got out of the hospital, she would make every effort she could to find out what had happened to him and bring him home.
She made good on that promise, creating missing posters and getting local people involved in the search. She even turned to social media, creating a special page on Facebook. It worked. As it turns out, Bentley had gone through the windshield and in his fear and confusion, had run away from the accident and become separated from Samantha. Being unfamiliar with the area, he become lost and wandered through the mountains for 19 days. Eventually, the poor dog made his way back to the place where the Jeep had ultimately come to rest, the place where he had last been with the people he loved. Fortunately, some hikers that were in the area saw him and alerted both Samantha and local authorities.
The poor dog was terrified and still seemed to be suffering from some type of confusion, likely due to the trauma of the accident. He was so frightened that he wouldn’t come to anyone, that is until he saw Samantha. It took him a few minutes to realize it was really her, but once he got sight of her and heard her voice, he ran straight into her arms. From there, the two spent several touching moments in an embrace, obviously relieved that they had once again found each other.
There is nothing that can take away the pain Samantha feels from losing her mother but it does help that Bentley survived and that the two were reunited. While she still struggles with her grief, she is immensely relieved that Bentley made it through the accident. Despite going through the windshield, he didn’t suffer any physical injuries except some mild dehydration from being out in the wilderness for so long. She simply couldn’t bear the thought of him wandering around out there, lost and confused. She had to go back for him. In some ways, being able to find Bentley has helped her deal with her grief. The two rely on each other.
While this is easily one of the most inspiring stories to come along in quite some time, it also has more than its fair share of strife. There’s nothing easy about losing a loved one and it’s even harder when it happens out of the blue. Fortunately, Samantha and Bentley do have each other. Samantha is even certain that both God and her mother’s spirit watched over this sweet dog and helped keep him safe while he was lost in the wilderness. To this day, she remains convinced that they helped reunite them, allowing the two of them to have a new beginning in the exact same place where everything they had known before changed in an instant.
