The message arrived like a door cracking open after years of doubt. Inmaculada Jackman learned from a Facebook post sent by a friend that Chong, the dog she had kept searching for since 2021, had been found in Indiana roughly 642 miles from Lincoln, Nebraska.
That was the first real break in a story that had stretched on for years. Jackman said Chong escaped from her home in Lincoln in 2021, and the search never fully stopped. “I still looked for him,” she said. She kept returning to the family’s old neighborhood, still watching for a familiar dog in motion. “We still went to our old neighborhood and drove around and looked to see if we could see anyone walking him or if he was running around somewhere.”
What happened in the years between remains unclear. At some point after Chong got loose, someone in Lincoln had him microchipped. The record does not identify who that person was, and it does not explain how Chong later ended up out of state. But when he was found last Sunday behind a truck stop in Indiana, that chip became the thread shelter staff could follow back to Nebraska.
Independent local reporting identified the shelter as the Hendricks County Animal Shelter. Once Jackman saw the post, she called right away and explained that Chong was her missing dog. Even then, the reunion was not immediate. She said shelter staff told her they hoped the people who had previously microchipped Chong would not come forward to claim him.
That waiting period became the decisive turn in the story. After three days, Chong was officially available for adoption. Only then could he be released back to Jackman and her family.
That detail matters because reunions like this are often carried not just by emotion, but by paperwork and timing. Shelters typically cannot hand over a found dog the moment someone calls. They have intake procedures and legal hold periods before an animal can be adopted or otherwise released. In Chong’s case, that three-day window was the line between another disappointment and a trip to Indiana to bring him home.
The other decisive fact was the microchip itself. The American Animal Hospital Association notes that microchips give shelters and veterinary teams a permanent form of identification to check when a collar or tag is missing, and its summary of AVMA data says lost dogs with microchips are returned to their owners at a much higher rate than dogs without them. AAHA also stresses that the registration attached to a chip has to stay current if owners want it to do its job.
Microchip lookups can also be more layered than many owners realize. As the mChip registry explains, AAHA’s Universal Pet Microchip Lookup Tool does not hold a single master database; instead, it points searchers toward participating registries where a chip number may be registered. In a case like Chong’s, that means the chip did not magically explain everything. It simply gave shelter staff a starting point strong enough to reconnect a dog in Indiana with a family in Nebraska.
For Jackman, that was enough. She made the trip to Indiana to pick Chong up, and Chong’s brother, Che Che, traveled too. Then the family headed back to Lincoln together.
There is still a long blank space in Chong’s story, and maybe there always will be. No one has explained where he had been all that time, or how he crossed so much distance. What is known is smaller, and maybe more powerful for that reason: Jackman kept looking, a chip kept one identifying thread intact, and when the chance finally came, the family was ready to go get him.
Never lose hope. It’s been five years, and we found him, Jackman said. Have you ever adopted a dog with a story like this? Share it in the comments.
By Jake Patterson — Freelance feature writer and former animal-shelter volunteer focused on rescue, adoption, and second-chance dog stories.
