Lauren Piccolo spent months searching for her lost puppy named Burt.
The dog is a Whippet with the coloring of a brindle and the figure of a small greyhound. He was less than a year old when he went missing in August in Manhattan's Morningside Heights neighborhood.
Fire Lt. Dave Kelly noticed the dog about three weeks ago on the FDNY's Bureau of Training grounds on Randall's Island, which is more than 3 miles away and across the East River from where the dog went missing.
Kelly started feeding the pup scraps in hopes of getting close enough to grab it.
"I would see him rummaging through the garbage cans," said Kelly, who is a self-described dog lover and owner of two rescued pups, according to the New York Daily News. "I would bring some dog food home and feed it, but every time I got close it would run away."
With the blizzard on its way, Kelly was worried the dog wouldn't survive and decided on Monday to set up a trap with food inside. By early Tuesday, he had captured the dog, the Associated Press reported.
Determined to find the dog's owner, he searched Facebook and found a page called Bring Burt Home.
The page described Burt as "devilishly handsome" and "bashful," which Kelly thought sounded like the right dog, but he wasn't sure since the pup was found so far away from his home.
Kelly contacted Piccolo and set-up a meeting with the dog Tuesday morning, and when they met he knew by Burt's reaction that he'd found his home again.
"I was with the dog for most of the day and he was still scared of me," Kelly explained. "But as soon as he saw his owner, he was wagging his tail and licking her."