"It feels like Christmas finally. We've been sitting here wondering where he's been," Oakland dog owner Brad Niess said.
Niess finally has his baby back, his 1-year-old Schnauzer, Clint, who had been missing for more than a week.
"Normally he has to sleep on his own doggy bed but he got to be up on the bed last night," he said.
And Clint is now reunited with 4-year-old Kevin, the other family Schnauzer who was not so lucky when both rescue dogs got loose after a contractor accidentally left the front door open.
Kevin turned up quickly, but he had been kicked, beaten and shot with a pellet gun. Little did anyone realize that Clint had been quickly discovered about a mile away by two brothers who were playing outside their grandmother's house on 77th Avenue near MacArthur Blvd.
"He came out of the bushes and we were feeding him chicken and he ran into my grandmother's house when my mom opened the door," 14-year-old Emoni Fountain
So their mother, Lakeysha Fountain, went to the computer and found the missing dog notice that Brad Niess had placed on Craigslist. She called him, but somehow the physical size didn't quite match and that was that, until she saw the story on the news last week and called back with the help of her sons.
"Mom, ask him what color collar he had on, I asked him what color collar he had on and he described the collar and the dog and that's when we realized it was Clint," she said.
She even e-mailed a photo of Clint through her cell phone.
"And I looked at it and I'm like that's Clint," Niess said.
So on Christmas Eve, the big reunion took place.
"It was touching, they were crying, thanking me, thanking the kids. The dog was licking them and there were hugs and the dog was crying. They were crying," Fountain said.
"It's the cheesy Christmas, the Christmas miracle. You hear about these sort of stories and you never think you know someone who's been through something like this but he literally showed up Christmas Eve," Niess.
