Community helps Texas dog owner get home

JACKSON, Tenn. — A Texas dog owner receives help from local groups during a tragic situation.

“My hat is off to Tennessee. I’ve never been there,” Nancy Hubbard, Julie’s mother said. “But I always have to think y’all came down to help us fight at the Alamo, and you have a good history up there.”

Hubbard experienced a parent’s worst nightmare after her daughter with special needs, Julie, was stranded with her dog at the airport near Jackson.

Julie was scheduled to meet someone, but it was a scam.

Like any worried parent, Nancy made phone calls.

One of those who answered the call for help was Jackson’s Animal Care Center.

“We were at work Tuesday afternoon, finishing up our day, and we were getting ready to leave,” Animal Care Center interim director Whitney Owen said. “The phone rang and so we answered the phone, and it was a frantic elderly lady.”

Owen says Hubbard was trying to figure out a way to get both Julie and her dog, Lady, back home to Nacogdoches, a town in east Texas.

Regional Inter-Faith Association and the DCS also stepped in.

Originally, the plan was to send Julie back to Texas on a Greyhound bus, but the bus line’s policy states no animals are allowed on the bus unless it’s a service animal.

“She refused to travel without the dog, and didn’t want to leave her,” Owen said.

Owen made a post on social media calling out for help.

Many responded with offers for donations towards a rental car and travel expenses.

She even found a volunteer driver to help Julie make the roughly nine hour trip back home.

“To see people step forward like that, not just for the animal but for the person too, it was really great,” Owen said.

“I feel like everyone helped her as if she were their family,” Hubbard said.

Hubbard is happy for the reunion with her daughter.