MARYSVILLE — After a journey fit for a Disney movie, Harry is finally home.
Harry, a rescue mutt believed to be part Portuguese water dog, was stolen in Seattle.
Actually, the van in which he was riding was stolen, but here we’re ahead of ourselves with this story.
Harry died in March 2009 after a bout with cancer. The white-and-black dog so loved to be in the van that “it was his favorite place in the world,” his owner Katie Barloon said.
“If you knew Harry, you would know he wouldn’t want to be left behind, that would be his worst nightmare.”
After the dog’s death, his remains were cremated and put in an urn. And while deciding where to scatter his ashes, his family wondered: Why not let Harry come along for more rides in the van?
Time went by. Barloon and her family liked having the idea of Harry around, still in the van’s back passenger seat, still with them in some way.
But over the July Fourth holiday last year, the family’s silver VW van was stolen from their driveway in north Seattle.
Although the van was recovered a few days later, the urn — and Harry — were missing.
“When the van was stolen, it was like ‘whatever,’” Barloon said. “Then all of a sudden it hit me that Harry was in the van. I can’t explain how devastating it was. I knew he was probably going to be gone forever.”
It’s not usual for thieves to imagine that valuables are stored inside urns, she said. She worried that whoever stole the van would find nothing but ashes and simply dump them out the window or into a trash bin. “That’s what really made me angry,” Barloon said.
For several months, Barloon tired to get area media interested in her story of the missing urn. She watched the news and scanned blogs to see if there was any word of the missing speckled-gray urn.
Barloon said she had given up on the idea of the urn being returned. “My feeling was whoever took him opened the urn and said, ‘Holy Toledo! This is not what we thought it would be.’”
Then earlier this month, while Barloon and her family were out of town, Marysville police disclosed that a man who lives in the northern part of the city had found an urn on his property and turned it over to police. At the time, they didn’t know if it contained human or pet remains.
The story was printed in The Herald on May 4. Several people came to the Marysville Police Department to take a look at the urn, said Lt. Darin Rasmussen.
Meanwhile the police department had the urn and its ashes examined by a funeral home, which said that the remains were from a pet.
A friend showed Barloon the newspaper story. “When I first saw the article, I knew it was him,” she said. “I mean, how many urns are lost?”
She called Marysville police to provide the exact dimensions of the urn and its description.
On Tuesday, she walked into the police department, where the urn was officially returned to her.
Barloon took the urn home. This time, she said, it won’t be kept in the van.
“We’ll keep him safe now and when the time comes, we’ll find a place for him,” she said.
“I would never have imagined that it would all work out.”
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486, salyer@heraldnet.com.
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