A truck driver wants to throw a “little pizza party” for the people who helped him find his dog after it ran off during a hike.
Truck driver Samuel Bissonette is from Canada, but frequently makes stops in Blacksburg, Virginia on his hauls. On his most recent stop in Blacksburg on April 10th, Bissonette stopped to hike a trail with his two dogs, and that’s when his world stopped.
“It was a kind of a small, narrow trail, so I have to unleash my dog. That’s not the first time I do this. Normally it’s okay but no, I did. Right when I unleashed him, Denver just ran off chasing a deer,” he said to WDBJ 7.
Bissonette searched for Denver but was unsuccessful, so he started making posters and placing them all over Blacksburg, and even made a Facebook page specifically for finding Denver.
“When I’ve lost him, my life just stopped. I mean, I needed to do everything I could. I couldn’t stop doing anything to try to find him,” he said.
After a few days, Bissonette got a call notifying him that a dog that seemed to be Denver had been hit by a car on Prices Fork Road, but had promptly gotten up and ran away. Bissonette says the news gave him hope, but he had to get back on the road to Georgia.
“That was so hard; I could afford a couple of miles after I left the town, like I need to try to focus my eyes, like, I was… that was so hard to let him behind. I know I wasn’t abandoning him. But I was feeling like I was abandoning him,” he said.
While he was making his run, people in the community where Denver was last spotted continuously called Bissonette with updates until he could return to the area.
“People were so amazing. I couldn’t even count the number of people who tried to help me out there,” he said.
Once back in the area, Bissonette decided to camp out in the area where Denver had last been seen and cook some food, hoping to lure the dog back to the truck. Bissonette sat there for hours with no sign of Denver, but when he finally opened the door to his truck and climbed in, Denver suddenly appeared and hopped right back into the cab.
Now, Bissonette wants to find a way to thank the people who tried to help.
“I want to do like, kind of a little pizza party, something that people would enjoy. I know it’s not gonna be a lot for them. But for me, it’s it’s really a lot. I mean, I’ll never forget the people down there,” he said.