We’ve featured several heartbreaking stories of faithful canines
waiting for their owners in the same spot for years at a time, never to
see them again, but this is one of those rare stories with a happy end.
After spending four years waiting for his human masters, a lost dog in
Thailand was finally reunited with them thanks to social media.
The story of Leo, a stray dog who has spent the last four years of
his life waiting at an intersection in the Thai city of Khon Kaen, went
viral at the beginning of this month, after a Facebook user uploaded
photos of the canine, sharing that he had seen the animal sitting in the
same spot every day, as if waiting for someone. They originally thought
the dog had been abandoned, but then realized that he looked well-fed,
so he asked around about him. It turned out that the dog had indeed been
spending most of his time around that intersection, but a woman had
been coming around regularly to bring him food and water. The plot
thickened…
One day, while photographing the dog everyone called Leo, the
Facebook user met the woman who take care of him. She had come to drop
off some food and he used the opportunity to learn more about him. The
45-year-old woman, named Saowalak, said that when she first found him in
that very same spot, several years ago, Leo was all skin and bones and
plagued by skin disease. She couldn’t bare to leave him like that, so
she took him home with her and nursed him back to health. However, one
day, Saowalak came home to find that Leo was gone. She looked for him
and found him in the same place she first saw him, and assumed that he
was waiting there for his owners, and didn’t try to take him away. She
just came and brought him food and water every few days.
After learning that the dog had spent the last few years in the same
spot where his masters had allegedly abandoned him, the Facebook user
decided to share the story on social media, documenting it with photos
of the canine and the kind-hearted woman who looked after him. The post
soon went viral and the photos of Leo got shared hundreds of times on
Facebook alone. And it was through social media that the photos reached
the eyes of Leo’s former old owner.
Nang Noi Sittisarn, a 64-year-old woman from Thailand’s Roi Et
Province, almost had a heart-attack when her daughter showed her a photo
of a pooch that looked a lot like BonBon, the beloved dog she had lost
during a car trip. On February 16, 2015, she and her husband took BonBon
and drove to see her daughter in Khon Kaen, but on their way back, they
somehow lost the dog. He was in the back of the car with the window
open and Auntie Noi suspects that he must have seen something and jumped
out of the car while they were waiting at a stoplight. She and her
husband only realized he was gone when they stopped at a gas station.
The woman and her husband drove back the way they came to look for
BonBon, but he was nowhere to be found. She recently told Thai reporters
that they looked for him for a whole week, before giving up, thinking
that he had been run over or otherwise killed. But when she saw a photo
of Leo on September 6th, she immediately knew it was her BonBon. And
when she learned that he had been waiting for her in the same spot for
the last four years, her heart melted.
As soon as she saw the photo and heard the story, Auntie Noi told her
daughter to drive her to where the dog was waiting. When she got there
and called his name, “BonBon”, the poor canine started wiggling his tail
and came to her, but when she tried to take him home with her, he was
reluctant to follow. She then understood that her BonBon had become
attached to Saowalak, the woman who had nursed him back to health a few
years back and had taken care of him ever since. She didn’t want to
force the dog to come with her so she agreed to leave him with her new
master. However, she and her daughter will come to visit him regularly
and bring him whatever he needs.
The story of Leo/BonBon melted the hearts of millions in Thailand and
recently transcended national borders, going viral in other East-Asian
countries.
