Petey never leaves her side, often snuggling next to her.
“He’s very lovable,” she said.
But a couple of days before Thanksgiving, Petey disappeared.
Cherryholmes had let him out of her Belleaire Avenue home to relieve himself before bedtime. She went back into the house to grab her shoes and by the time Cherryholmes returned only a couple of minutes later, the dog was gone.
She spent all night and the next day looking for him and calling his name, to no avail.
“I was devastated,” she said. “He’s my baby. And after he left, I was just so lonesome.”
More than two weeks went by without Petey, but she couldn’t bring herself to put away his food dishes and beds.
Then about two weeks ago, she visited her husband’s grave and asked him for help.
“I told him how much I missed Petey and wished he could help bring him back,” she said.
Later that day, a family friend called Cherryholmes to tell her she had heard that another friend’s co-worker at nearby Cambridge Home Health Care, Tonya Barrett, had found a small dog that might be Petey.
The dog had run up to Barrett that afternoon in the East Main Street office’s parking lot, with ice in his fur.
“He was just trembling and shaking so bad from the cold,” Barrett said.
She couldn’t take him home because she has two dogs. So Barrett wrapped him in a blanket and went to another office next door, which found someone to take him in until the owner could be located.
Cherryholmes took Petey’s picture to Cambridge the next morning to confirm it and then arranged to pick him up at his foster home that afternoon.
“I said ‘Petey’ and he came flying around the corner and right to me ... I just started crying and hugged him,” she said.
She believes her husband helped return Petey, who got a clean bill of health from the vet after his adventure.
Cherryholmes wonders if someone might have taken Petey the night he vanished because he never wanders, she said, and can’t walk far or fast due to arthritis.
He’s lucky he didn’t get hit by a car or freeze, Barrett said.
“All the stars aligned to get him home,” she said.
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