CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – On the morning of April 2, Michael Joy, a Clarksville resident and veteran of the U.S. Army, received a phone call he and his family would never forget.

“I look at my phone and I’m getting a call from Cleveland, Ohio, and I don’t know anybody in Ohio,” Joy said.

Despite his normal practice of ignoring calls from unknown numbers, his intuition told him to answer.

“So I picked up the phone and the lady was like, ‘Is this Mr. Joy?'” he said. “She was like, ‘This is City Dogs of Cleveland. We found your dog Sam.'”

He was in disbelief. Sam had gone missing four years earlier when Joy’s family was living in Georgia. The next day, the family loaded up in their car and made the eight-hour drive from Clarksville to Cleveland.

Sam’s story

Joy said he rescued Sam when he was active-duty Army, installed at Fort Benning in Georgia.

“Some family said he didn’t want him. He was less than a year old, and they couldn’t handle him. I was like, ‘You know what, I can handle dogs pretty well,’ so I went and took them off of their hands,” Joy said.

As soon as Joy got Sam home, where they had two other dogs, they began to work on obedience training for Sam to eventually become either a service dog or an emotional support animal.

A few months later, Joy was deployed.

“I had to go on a (temporary duty assignment), came back, and my wife and kids were like, ‘Hey, the dogs got out and now we can’t find them,'” Joy said.

They were able to find two of them, but Sam had disappeared.

Joy went on local Facebook pages to search and checked out every shelter in Columbus, Georgia, near Fort Benning.

But he didn’t have that much time left in Georgia: He was set to be reassigned to Fort Campbell in six months.

“I still checked the pages, thinking maybe I’ll get lucky and one day he will show up,” Joy said.

They had no such luck, and the family moved to Tennessee.

Sam the dog (Courtesy Michael Joy)

The reunion

On the morning of April 2, the Cleveland Division of Police picked up a stray dog and left him in the care of the city’s Animal Care and Control, according to a statement from the City of Cleveland.

After the phone call from Cleveland alerting the family to Sam’s location, Joy’s oldest daughter came in the room.

“She said, ‘Dad, what was that?’ And I was like, ‘They found my dog,'” he said. His daughter then asked what they were going to do about it.

“I said, ‘We’re going to Ohio tomorrow,'” Joy said.

“On the drive, it took about eight or nine hours, I’m looking at my wife and my kids and I just couldn’t believe that was actually happening. This is like a dream,” Joy said, adding that he was worried Sam wouldn’t remember him. For one thing, Joy had since grown out his beard.

“As soon as he turned a corner, I remembered exactly who he was. He came up to me, and first he didn’t recognize me, but within 30 seconds, he remembered and he was happy. My wife and kids were crying,” Joy said.

Joy said the experience reminded him of the feeling of getting home after a long deployment.

The other two dogs Joy had at the time have since passed; Sam was the youngest of the trio. In December 2020, Joy had just adopted another dog for his daughter: a chocolate lab he also named Sam.

“Sam was what I always wanted my dog to be named from watching John Wayne movies as a kid,” Joy said.

He began training the new Sam for his daughter and was in the middle of the process when he got the phone call from Cleveland. The family now has not one, but two Sams.

Sam the dog sleeping on the couch (Courtesy Michael Joy)

Cleveland mystery

It’s still a mystery how Sam got from Georgia to Ohio. But one thing is for sure: Sam and Joy are happy to be together again.

“He’s been inseparable. I’m glad I’m retired because it gives me and him some more time to bond,” Joy said.

With the homecoming, the Joys now have five dogs. Sam regained a spot on the couch.

Joy said he’s glad he had Sam microchipped when he was neutered.

“I keep telling people to get their dogs microchipped because I would have never found him if he wasn’t. And I had totally forgotten he was even chipped,” Joy said.

The shelter was glad for the microchip as well.

“One of the best parts of our job at Cleveland Animal Care & Control is reuniting lost dogs with loving owners who have been looking for them,” kennel manager Michelle Harvanek said in a statement.

“We take a lot of pride in our efforts to trace microchips right away and making several attempts to contact owners. We also place a huge emphasis on microchipping dogs. Every dog that leaves our care through adoption or return to owner is microchipped if they weren’t already. This is one of those very feel-good stories that make all of our hard work worth it,” Harvanek said.