Nearly a year and 425 miles later, dog reunited with family

If cats have nine lives, Pepper the pooch certainly has at least two.

Pepper, a 7-year-old golden retriever, disappeared two days before Christmas last year while his owners were vacationing in Mexico. Believing he was gone for good, the Carter family of Buckhead adopted another rescued retriever and went on with their lives.

Enlarge this image

Chandler Brown/ cmbrown@ajc.com

Now that he’s back, Pepper the pooch can pose for a family portrait with Simon Carter. Missing since Christmas, Pepper’s microchip led to an eventual reunion with his Buckhead family.

Pets stories

• 2 Georgia canines earn shot at Dogs of Valor Award 
• Vinings water dog rockets to fame 
• Cobb man left 35 cats home alone, police say 
• Agility class wins over dog, owner 
• Gwinnett clears the way for supervised tethering of dogs 

• Back to AJCPETS
• Find Atlanta volunteer opportunities for pet lovers.

Then one day last month, Liz Carter got a phone call.

“Do you have a dog named Pepper?” the stranger asked. “Yes. But we lost him on Dec. 23.”

“I have him,” the man replied.

The bigger shock: The call came from St. Petersburg, Fla., 425 miles from the Carters’ home.

“I was speechless,” Carter recalled Saturday. “I didn’t know what to do first.”

Turns out, Pepper had a microchip implanted under his skin that allowed a Florida veterinarian to trace Pepper to his owners.

It’s not clear where Pepper was for nine months or how he got to Florida. Stephen and Liz Carter have no friends or relatives in the St. Petersburg area.

Well, they do now.

They are grateful that Pepper, flea-infested and filthy, wandered into Jay Getman’s St. Petersburg travel agency on a rainy afternoon late last month. Getman, 46, a dog lover, took Pepper home, fed him and stayed up until 3 a.m. cleaning his fur and trying to get rid of the fleas. Two days later, Getman took Pepper to a vet who scanned the chip and provided the Carters’ contact information.

The day after she got the call, Carter, a mother of two teenage sons, drove to Florida, picked up Pepper and reunited the family at their beach house on Florida’s Atlantic coast.

“He remembered everything” about the beach house, Carter said. “He knew where the gate was. He knew how to get to the beach.”

Back at home on West Paces Ferry Road, “he steals shoes and leaves them in exactly the same places he used to,” Liz Carter said, noting that Pepper got a clean bill of health at the vet last week. “It’s uncanny how he’s gotten back into normal life. He never missed a beat.”

Is Getman a hero?

“No,” he said in a telephone interview last week. “I’m a dog lover. That’s what we do. I’d do it all again, absolutely.”