Woman Adopts Elderly Dog From Shelter and Finds Out It’s Actually Her Lost Childhood Puppy

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From the archives: this story was last updated in March 2019.

At age 14, a young woman from Pennsylvania was forced to part ways with her beloved puppy Chloe, who held a special place in her heart. She had always wondered what had happened to the pup—that was until an unbelievable twist of fate occurred on social media many years later.

Now 21, the young woman Nicole Grimes, of West Brownsville, was considering adopting another dog in early 2018, not long after Grimes’s daughter had turned 1.

That was when one of her friends on Facebook shared with her photos of an elderly Pomeranian-poodle, which needed to be re-homed, as an adoptive option. Yet, the 11-year-old dog looked strangely familiar.

“It looked very similar to my puppy when I was little,” Grimes, now a pharmacy technician, told Observer-Reporter.

“I really loved this dog,” she said. “She was a special gift for me.”

Chloe entered into Grimes’s life when her late grandmother Jane Cecil gave the dog to her as a gift.

“I was 10 years old and all I wanted was a puppy. She was wearing a pink bow when Nana gave her to me,” Grimes told BBC.

Since then, the young girl and puppy had formed a close bond. Yet, sadly, four years later, they had no choice but to give Chloe up to the Humane Society for adoption, as she was too noisy.

“My dad got a new job working from home but Chloe was too yappy and he had to be on the phone all the time,” Grimes said. “I remember my dad picked me up from school when I was 14 with the dog in the back seat. I knew we had to give her away.”

Speaking to TODAY, she said, “I was really sad because I loved the dog.”

And that is what led Grimes to, years later, adopt that much-older dog whose resemblance had an uncanny similarity to Chloe.

However, when Grimes learned that the elderly dog also shared the same name as her childhood best friend (Chloe) and was, in fact, the same age that her dog would have been, the young woman clued in that they might also be the same dog.

And there were still more similarities; both dogs had lots of energy and liked giving kisses, though the older dog was “smaller and doesn’t have teeth.”

“When we got her, right away she just fit right in. There was just something about her!!” Grimes later wrote on Facebook. “As the day went on, different things she did/how she acted was EXACTLY what my old Chloe did. Last night I was holding her and just cried and cried because that dog was hugging me back and I just held her close to my heart.

“I just knew in my heart this was my Chloe.”

However, her husband was skeptical. “He thought I was crazy,” Grimes said.

To clear away all doubts, they brought the dog to the vet to have her microchip scanned, and it turns out her intuition was spot on.

The nine-digit chip number, 024 099 811, was identical to the chip number of Grimes’s childhood puppy that she had bade farewell to seven years prior.

“We couldn’t believe it. It’s just crazy!” Grimes said.

“That was one of the most exciting moments of my life. I just never thought I’d see her again.”

Grimes and her mom believe the incredible reunion was somehow brought about by her grandmother, who had died a few years back.

In an unexplainable twist of fate, Chloe and Grimes had been brought back together again after seven years apart.

During their years separated, Chloe had been well taken care of though—an elderly couple had adopted her before later passing away. And in a surprising twist of fate, the dog had been turned over to a neighbor afterward, who happened to be Grimes’s friend on Facebook.

Now, the older dog is settling in well with her not-so-unfamiliar family and has begun bonding with Grimes’s baby daughter Violet.

“They love to play with each other. Chloe is very gentle with Violet and it warms my heart to see them together,” Grimes said.

“It’s like a part of my childhood came back.”