Dog featured on Florida beer cans is reunited with her family in Minnesota after a cross-country road trip
A shelter dog featured on a Florida brewery’s beer can has been reunited with the family that’s been missing her since she disappeared three years ago in Iowa.
Nobody knows how Hazel got to Florida, but the super-affectionate 7-year-old had been at the Manatee County Animal Services shelter in Palmetto, Florida, since last March.
They called her Day Day at the shelter, and she was one of four dogs chosen to have their pictures featured on special cans of Motorworks Brewing beer in hopes that they would be adopted.
The marketing campaign went viral, and Monica Mathis recognized her good girl when she saw the story on social media.
“I was looking at the dogs and I was like oh my gosh, that’s Hazel,” Mathis told CNN affiliate Bay News 9.
Hazel had gotten away when the family lived in Iowa, she said.
“She was an escape artist; she was very good at getting loose. Bolting right through the door. Knocking me over just to get out the door,” she told CNN affiliate WWSB.
Hazel had a microchip, but the information was outdated, so the shelter couldn’t find her owners, who had moved from Iowa to St. Paul, Minnesota, according to Hans Wohlgefahrt of the shelter.
Once Mathis submitted vet records and photos to prove the dog was her Hazel, the shelter began making arrangements to get her home.
Wohlgefahrt ended up taking Hazel on a cross-country road trip.
It took more than two days for them to make the almost-1,700-mile drive.
NBC News was at the house when Hazel got there and video shows the excited dog jumping into Mathis’ lap and putting her front paws on Mathis’ shoulders.
“I’m going to miss this girl,” Wohgefahrt said in a Facebook video he posted Friday when he arrived at Mathis’ house.
Before the trip, Wohlgefahrt told CNN that he and Hazel had grown close but that he was happy she was finally going home.