Heidi chases rabbit in AZ, ends up in East Coast

PHOENIX – A man is waiting to be reunited with his dog after she was found clear across the country in Pennsylvania.

The trick now is getting the animal back to Arizona.

They called her “Pooch” in Pennsylvania and soon, her incredible journey will come to an end as this family dog makes her way back to the desert.

Heidi is a German Shorthaired Pointer who calls Black Canyon City home. So how did this gentle 13-year-old dog end up on the East Coast?

“She was scared to death, and they stopped. They picked her up. They took her wherever she lived. She was working there temporarily,” said Joyce Harrison, of the German Shorthaired Rescue of Pennsylvania.

Harrison, who spoke with Fox 10 by phone on Saturday, has been a foster mother for Heidi after a woman who was working in Arizona found her along Interstate 17.

Fearing she was lost or abandoned, the woman took Heidi home with her — all the way back East — not knowing she’d run away from her nearby home because she was chasing a rabbit.

But a microchip helped determine Heidi’s future as state agencies and charity organizations teamed up to get her home.

“When he told me her name, I ran to where she was, and I started calling her Heidi. She just looked like, ‘Oh my God, you know my name,’” Harrison said.

“We say, ‘Hey, we’ve got to move a dog from here to here, and who can sign up and take, you know and fly, from whatever location to points that we have to go to. And people call and sign up and say, ‘I’ll do it,” said private pilot Bill Rademacher, who volunteers as a pet rescue pilot for situations just like this one.

“If I can move an animal from Texas or Pennsylvania or New York out here to the West or the Midwest, someplace for somebody who wants that animal and will care for it, then I’ll do it,” Rademacher said.

Pilots N Paws is the volunteer organization that has a network of private pilots on standby to transport animals. The agency is still looking for two more pilots to complete the journey that will go from Pennsylvania to Ohio, to Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico — and finally — to Arizona.

Stay tuned, we will keep you updated on Heidi’s journey!