by Bailey Basham, Messenger Staff Writer

When Joey DiDomenico and his family relocated from Murfreesboro to the Mountain earlier this year, he did not anticipate the community rallying behind them so quickly.

However, on Thanksgiving, when his one-year-old German shepherd Sascha did not come home from her morning romp, DiDomenico said neighbors near and far did not waste any time in stepping up.

“We starting posting stuff on community Facebook pages and on our personal accounts to see if anyone had seen Sascha. We went to the vet’s office, All Creatures, to let the staff know to be on the lookout for a German shepherd,” DiDomenico said. “The next morning, our male dog, Axel, came back, and I started combing the area for Sascha. We had not heard anything. We had started to give up hope at that point.”

Sascha was missing for a full week before the family heard anything. It was a staffer at All Creatures Veterinary Clinic in Monteagle that helped the family reconnect with their pet. She had been on the lookout for a female German shepherd since Sascha had run away a week earlier. When a local family brought Sascha in for a well check, she connected the dots.

The family who initially found Sascha told DiDomenico that on Thanksgiving, their children and grandchildren had come for a visit. While they were there, Sascha showed up on her doorstep.

“They ended up falling in love with Sascha. Not knowing she belonged to anyone, they took her to the vet and gave her all new shots and a bath and proceeded to send her home to Pennsylvania for the grandkids,” he said. “Apparently it didn’t work out, and the family took her to a shelter in Pennsylvania. It was the nurse at All Creatures who helped to sort things out. The day after we’d let them know to be on the lookout, the nurse called the family and said, ‘Hey, I think that’s their dog.’”

After talking with the family and connecting with the couple in Pennsylvania, DiDomenico said he was prepared to make the 12-hour drive to retrieve Sascha. He and his 8-year-old daughter Belle, a second grader at Sewanee Elementary, piled up in the car and began the nearly 700-mile drive.

“The whole way up there, she was just chomping at the bit. We were standing in the gas station when we see this car pull up, and Belle said, ‘Really, can we go?’ She grabbed my hand, and we took off,” he said. “She was so excited. She rubbed Sascha from her car seat the entire way home.”

DiDomenico said as soon as he got home, he posted an update on social media to let neighbors who had been invested in the story know of Sascha’s safe return.

“For us being kind of new residents, the amount of support from strangers who helped look for her made us feel really validated about the fact that we are supposed to be here in Sewanee,” he said. “People would post that they were getting in their cars to drive around and look for Sascha and that they’d been asking their neighbors if they’d seen her. The whole community pulled together, and that just reaffirms why we are here.”