"My gut told me she was still alive," her owner Darwin Cameron told InsideEdition.com.
A deaf and elderly dog is now home safe after being lost in the woods for nine months, including a particularly rough winter, before miraculously reuniting with her family.
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"For a dog who's been through what she's been through, she's doing incredibly well," the dog's owner, Darwin Cameron of Boise, Idaho, told InsideEdition.com. "She has good days and bad days, but we're enjoying every second we have with her."
He said Mo, their 14-year-old Cheapeake Bay retriever, recognized his wife right away when they went to rescuer Cheri Glanker's home to pick the pup up.
"She’s been through hell and back," Glanker told InsideEdition.com. "She made it through bears, and wolves, and coyotes, and cougars. She’s just a legend."
The elderly pup ran off last September during a hunting trip with her owners. Since then, the couple and the community have been tirelessly searching for him.
"We were trying to be realistic – we had way better odds of winning the lottery," Cameron said. "But we always held out hope. Every ounce of my body said that dog was still alive."
But she said a friend spotted the dog last month and alerted Glanker, who is known in the community for facilitating dog rescues for nearly 20 years.
Although the elderly pup was covered in ticks and emaciated, Glanker said, "I was totally suspicious [it was Mo.]"
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Glanker said she spent about a week rehabilitating the rescued pup, including giving her baths and feeding her a steady diet of hand-cooked chicken, scrambled eggs and rice before she invited the Camerons to pick up their pup.
“She’s a tenacious dog,” Glanker said. “She was not going to give up. She was searching for her family.”
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