Postal carrier reunites lost dog from Troy with her humans

TROY — After going missing and surviving outside for ten of the coldest days in the Monadnock Region this winter, Remy, a 2-year-old pit bull, was reunited with her family on Saturday. A USPS employee recognized her from a Facebook post and picked her up in Fitzwilliam while on her route. 

Remy ran away on Jan. 16, just before frigid weather hit the area. Last week, the temperature dipped as low as minus 20 degrees.

“We were thrilled,” Anthony Cesolini, Remy’s owner, said of his family’s reunion with their pet. He lives with his fiancée and their three children

“We had searched and searched, and Troy was great with lots of people that helped,” Cesolini said.

Somebody thought they might've seen Remy at the Cheshire Fairgrounds, so Cesolini searched there. "I walked miles and miles in that area," he recalled. 

It wasn't Remy though. And when the temperature dropped below minus ten degrees, Cesolini said he lost hope. 

He wasn’t the only one; Cesolini thinks his other dog, Mya, a 14-year-old black lab, did too. She died while Remy was gone.

The pair ran off when Cesolini was fixing an issue with their pellet-stove. The door was open at some point, when the pair escaped, though he noted the dogs aren’t known to be runners.

The family realized Remy was missing when only Mya returned to their door about a half hour later. 

Cesolini said Mya came back with small scratches.

“Nothing that looked like an animal attack, but she did have some marks, so I don't know how they got split up. I would just say that they definitely got split up, and they typically stay together, even when they've slipped out the door and stayed in the area before ... They don't go far. So my guess is that something startled them and then they split in different directions,” Cessolini said.

He thinks the exhaustion of getting back home also played a part in Mya's passing.

"They were good together," Cesolini said of the two dogs. "Mya acted like her mom." 

After returning, Cesolini said Mya never walked, barked or wagged her tail again.

“If I said Remy's name to her, she would look away, which is why I thought the dog may or may not even be alive, because when I mentioned her name, she would just turn and look at the wall,” he said.

“I truly thought she was dying from a broken heart, because she felt like the other dog didn't make it.”

Mya died on Tuesday, Jan. 21.

A Facebook post featuring Remy that circulated on the platform would end up leading to the pit bull's rescue.  

Remy was found in Fitzwilliam, which neighbors Troy to the southeast. Britney Dion, a United States Postal Service substitute mail carrier, spotted Remy while making deliveries on her route. 

“I saw something in the distance … And I noticed that this dog didn't have any people around,” she recalled. Upon a closer look, she recognized the dog from a poster on Facebook with a photo of Remy, and thought it could be her. 

Remy started running away as Dion approached. She racked her brain for the dog’s name. “And I was like, oh my god, Remy.”

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“And she turned and looked at me and, like, started wagging her tail, and I just started crying.”

Dion had caught Remy’s attention; but it took a little longer to convince her to come over.

“I got down to her level, because I know, like, some dogs don't like big, scary people coming right after them. So I got down to her level, and I started calling her name, being like, ‘It's okay baby, come here.’”

It worked. “She got closer, and I eventually just, like, wrapped her up and, like, snagged her and put her in the van.”

“She definitely wasn't scared of me. Like she kind of just let it happen.”

Dion said when she found Remy, she was so skinny she could see her rib cage. Cesolini said she was about 40 pounds before she went missing, but thinks she lost roughly 20 during the ordeal.

Remy was cold, too. “I blasted the heat in the van … I let her sit on my lap, and I was kind of holding her, yeah, and I let the heat blast on us, like, to get her warm, because she was shaking,” Dion recalled. It was about five minutes until the shivering stopped. Dion wrapped Remy in her rain jacket, too.

“She seemed a lot more like, calm, relaxed, just exhausted, honestly,” she said. Remy drifted in and out of sleep for the next hour and a half that she was with Dion, according to her.

Getting word that Remy was found came as a shock, Cesolini said. Dion's mother reached out to the family. 

The day Dion found Remy, it certainly wasn’t warm, but the temperature had risen some.

“I truly think Saturday, she was found because it was a warmer day compared to the rest of the week … so I think she made the choice that it was kind of an all or nothing thing, that she had to try to find help or find food.”

He thinks Remy survived up until then by finding somewhere, like an outbuilding, to hide in, noting there are many farms in the area she was found. Remy has a very thin coat of fur, and Cessolini believes finding a place to stay is how she was able to stay warm enough to survive. He said her paws weren’t showing signs of being damaged from the cold or ice, which also leads him to this conclusion. Other than being malnourished, Remy suffered no injuries. 

“I don't think she moved around that much from that point. She stayed in that area,” he said.

When Remy reunited with her family she was tired, but wagging her tail.

“She was thrilled to see us, you know, she was still pretty weak, you know, but was still making an effort to see everybody, and was very happy to be home,” Cesolini said.

He said her weight loss “hits home, as far as you know, what she went through,” She’s doing well now though.

“And you know, very much, still our dog, you know, you could tell.” 

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Sophia Keshmiri can be reached at 603-283-0725 or skeshmiri@keenesentinel.com. 

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