Woman’s utter shock as her beloved puppy is found ALIVE five years after she escaped from backyard
A Southern California woman has been reunited with her beloved dog in what she has described as a ‘miracle’, five years after the pup vanished without a trace from her backyard.
Michelle Bluestone, 29, had long believed her dog Lola was dead after the small Schnauzer mix slipped through a fence at her parents’ Reseda home in 2021 and disappeared.
‘Losing her completely shattered me. I was doing everything I could, day and night, just trying to find her,’ Bluestone told the Daily Mail.
She spent weeks putting up flyers, posting on social media and chasing sightings, even joining Facebook groups for missing pets, where tips sometimes led her to reunite other lost pets with their owners, but never Lola.
Bluestone had not planned to adopt a dog when she visited a shelter to play with some dogs in 2018 during her final semester of college to relieve stress. That is, until she met Lola.
She said the dog’s anxiety melted away when she held her, and she immediately knew she could not leave without her.
Lola, an indoor dog who was not wearing a collar at the time, is believed to have been spooked and escaped through a small crawl space under a backyard door. Bluestone said she had been advised not to leave a collar on her dog while home alone for safety reasons.
Despite Lola being microchipped, no one ever called, and over time Bluestone was forced to accept she may never see her dog again.
Michelle Bluestone said she was stunned when an animal shelter called in February 2026 to say her dog Lola had been found alive after years with no sightings despite being microchipped (Pictured: the day she adopted Lola in 2018)
Lola, who disappeared from Bluestone’s Reseda home in April 2021, was discovered on the side of the road and taken to an Echo Park shelter, where staff tracked down her owner
‘After a while, I just accepted the idea that she might not be alive anymore,’ she said.
But in February 2026, everything changed.
Bluestone was at home when she received a call from an unfamiliar number telling her Lola had been found – just a mere 30 minute drive from where she was last seen.
‘When they told me they had Lola, I was completely thrown off. I kept thinking there was no way it could actually be her,’ she said.
The call came from an animal shelter in Echo Park after someone found Lola on the side of the road around 25 miles from where she had gone missing and turned her over to police.
‘It didn’t feel real at first. I needed a moment to even process what they were saying,’ she added.
Years passed and life moved forward. Bluestone got married, moved to Simi Valley and adopted a new dog named Sunny, but the loss never faded.
Bluestone rushed to the shelter, still struggling to process what she was about to see.
Video of the reunion shows Bluestone gasping as Lola, now 11, is brought out by the shelter, before she embraces the dog she hadn’t seen in half a decade.
The call came from an animal shelter in Echo Park after someone found Lola on the side of the road around 25 miles from where she had gone missing and turned her over to police
The day Lola was picked up in February 2026
‘Seeing her again after all that time was overwhelming. I couldn’t believe she was really in front of me,’ she said.
The reunion came at a moment Bluestone said she needed it most, following two miscarriages and just two months after her grandfather died in December.
Remarkably, Lola, who was three at the time of her disappearance, survived five years on her own.
She was found with 11 rotted teeth that required extraction and severely overgrown nails that had curled so much she was effectively walking on them, but her overall condition was far better than expected.
‘I still don’t know how she made it all that time. It’s incredible she survived,’ Bluestone said.
Bluestone believes it is possible someone may have taken Lola in at some point rather than her surviving entirely on her own.
Although she was timid at first, Lola quickly settled back into home life.
Though she is older now, Bluestone said Lola is still the same affectionate dog, often rolling onto her back to ask for belly rubs.
Lola has since recovered and is settling back into home life after an emotional reunion
Now reunited with Bluestone and her new family, including Sunny, Lola is returning to her old self, but the reunion has also been bittersweet.
‘It’s amazing to have her back, but it’s also hard thinking about everything she went through and all the time we lost,’ she said.
She added that the experience has reinforced the importance of microchipping pets and holding onto hope.
‘Miracles can happen. I grieved her and thought she was dead after months of searching, but she came back,’ Bluestone said.
