Brixton is back with the family who rescued him as an 8-week-old puppy.
Courtesy of Cody Benjamin
Cody Benjamin and Brixton seem like an inseparable pair.
The Cary dad, his wife and their two young kids brought the puppy home from a rescue group when he was 8 weeks old. He calls the dog his “road buddy.” Benjamin, who has a roofing company with his brother, brings Brixton to work.
But earlier this week, the puppy disappeared from a job site at a Woodridge church.
“I did not think we were going to see him again,” Benjamin said.
Thankfully, the story didn’t end there. The family shared their ordeal with WGN. A platform called PawBoost sent out alerts. Then Benjamin’s wife, Tucker, received a call on Tuesday night from someone who said they found Brixton wandering in a park.
“It was a very stressful two days,” Benjamin said.
“There was a lot of help from people trying to get the story out to find him,” Cody Benjamin said of his family’s puppy, Brixton.
Courtesy of Cody Benjamin
The saga began Monday. Benjamin had to run to Home Depot.
“All his roofers were still there working, and his office manager was like a mile away, about to be there, and he set out food for him to eat. And when the office manager got there, Brixton was gone,” Benjamin’s wife recalled.
He initially wondered if he forgot to clip the puppy back up because “we were all just playing with him.” But there was a tracking device on the dog’s collar. It would lead Benjamin about a mile away.
“He couldn’t have gone that far that quick,” he said.
Benjamin found the collar on the street, his wife said, so it was “pretty clear that someone had taken him.” Woodridge police confirmed the dog’s owner filed a report.
“He’s not some expensive designer dog. He’s a dog we rescued to give a second chance to,” Benjamin said.
He and his wife, parents to a 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter, didn’t know how to break the news.
“So we had not told them yet. We were just trying to buy ourselves some time to figure out what we were going to do or say,” Benjamin said.
His wife and the person who called her Tuesday arranged to have Benjamin pick up Brixton from a local pet shop.
“So my guess is that whoever took Brixton realized that it was the wrong thing to do, let him go in that area,” and the person “sees this cute puppy without a collar,” Tucker Benjamin said.
Benjamin put Brixton in his truck. The dog was “pretty proud and happy again.” Shortly after, his road buddy was sleeping, riding shotgun on the way home.