I couldn't get the link to copy, so hope it is ok to paste this story from our local news paper:
Boy's best friend ~ Dog mourns loss of owner, 15
Since her best friend's death, Zelda has taken to wandering.
Neighbors spot the one-eyed, rust-colored dog roaming the farm roads near her home, heading in the direction of the cemetery.
That's where the dog was found recently, say animal officers, roving the grounds of a small brick church on Bremen Highway, yards from her owner's tombstone.
"She's without her boy," said mom Marci Reed. "She just sniffs all over looking for her boy."
Zelda and her owner, Joshua Reed, 15, were inseparable ever since Josh rescued the dog three years before, when she was hit by a car.
It had been nightfall when the family drove past the dog lying in the road and Josh had pointed frantically at the crumpled figure.
"He jumped out of the moving van," Marci Reed remembers during a recent visit to her home.
"He yelled, 'Stop! We have to get the dog!' " The teen brought the bleeding animal in the van, wrapping the dog in his jacket.
The child stayed up all night talking to the dog, his mom remembered with tears in her eyes. "He kept saying, 'I love you. I love you. You'll be all right, I'll take care of you.'"
Zelda lost an eye in the accident, and her tail was broken in several places, but the dog flourished at the Reed home.
Zelda seemed to know that Josh had saved her life, said family members. The dog bonded instantly with the boy, if not so much with the rest of the family.
"When we first got the dog, she wouldn't even take a hotdog from me," Marci Reed remembered, but she followed Josh everywhere, waiting for him every day when he got off the school bus.
The teen even had a special call for the dog, a kind of "whoop whoop" sound that would bring the dog running.
Zelda and Josh would roll around in the grass outside the family's Mishawaka farm. They would race down the gravel drive with Josh on his bike and Zelda sprinting beside him.
"He used to say she was faster than a Jaguar," Marci Reed said.
So Zelda, along with the rest of the Reed family, entered a world of emptiness last year when one day, Josh didn't come home.
Gone too soon
Since he first learned to walk when he was 8 months old, Joshua Reed never slowed down.
"From then on it was constant movement," remembered his mom.
"He liked anything fast." Snowboarding, skateboarding, roller-skating, Josh was happiest on wheels.
When he asked his parents for the four-wheeler they first said "no." But Josh promised to earn half the money for the vehicle himself, said his dad, and worked extra hard on the farm to make the wish a reality.
The Penn High School freshman loved his new ATV, riding it along with a group of fellow four-wheeling friends in the summer of 2009.
Before he headed out the evening of Sept. 3, his mom spoke to him briefly on the phone, asking him whether he wanted pizza later.
"He said, 'buy two pizzas,'" Marci Reed remembered, her voice breaking with emotion. "I said, 'be careful. I mean it.'"
The Reeds will never know why Josh didn't stop and look when he approached the intersection of Pierce Road and Indiana 331. It might have been because the road had previously been closed and only recently opened for traffic.
State police said the pickup truck driver reported he didn't see the boy on the ATV until it was too late.
Josh was thrown 120 feet, his dad said. He died instantly.
Marci Reed was at her younger sons' football practice when a friend of Josh's called to say there had been an accident and she needed to go to the hospital.
"I said, 'tell me what happened?'" Marci Reed remembered, her voice breaking into a sob. "'You can't do that, you have to tell me what happened!'"
A police officer came on the line then, and instructed her to go to the hospital. The mother knew it was really bad, she said, when she arrived there before the ambulance.
Doctors said there was nothing they could do. Josh was gone.
Marci and her husband went into the hospital room where their son lay, to say goodbye.
"He looked so pretty, he didn't even look like he was hurt," the mom remembered. "His eyes were so blue."
Zelda's search
Josh is remembered most by friends and family as a great friend and lover of all animals, especially ones like Zelda who needed extra care.
"Anything broken, he wanted to fix," said his mom.
Every year, Josh showed cattle and pigs at the 4-H County Fair and was his dad's "right-hand man" on their New Road dairy farm.
The middle of five brothers ranging in age from 11 to 31, Josh always had a strong sense of individuality, said his parents, be it wearing a silly hat or starting a new trend.
"He rocked the bandanna," Marci Reed remembered with a smile.
Unlike some children, Josh was also unwavering in what he wanted to be when he grew up. He had decided to become a plastic surgeon years before, said his mom, after watching a documentary on children with cleft palates.
Hundreds of friends came to Josh's funeral, according to his parents, many of whom called the teenager his or her "best friend."
But there was one more loyal fan of Josh's who couldn't speak her grief or ask questions about where her friend had gone.
"It was funny when I got home (from the hospital) the dog came and put her head on my lap," said David Reed. "Like she knew."
For days afterward, Zelda wandered up and down the family farm, searching high and low for her boy.
She slept in Josh's room every night, until the day Marci found the dog had eaten one of Josh's shoes, something the dog had never done before. Marci wonders if maybe Zelda was angry.
"She's not the same dog," said Marci, stroking Zelda's coat comfortingly. "She was like him. She was way hyper, she used to chase cats..."
"She's just not the same."
'Sixth sense'
Zelda had never run away before the accident, but now, the Reeds say, the dog takes to the road any chance she gets.
She was taken to the cemetery only once by the family. Marci Reed brought Zelda to St. John's Cemetery on Bremen Highway after the first time she ran away.
That time the dog was found near Riley High School in South Bend where animal officials said the dog was lucky, since small dogs like Zelda are often stolen and used as "bait dogs."
Marci believes the dog had a special angel watching out for her that day.
Since visiting the graveyard that first time, the dog has been caught twice more near the cemetery route.
"They always say that animals have that extra sense," said Jordan McGuire, with the Humane Society of St. Joseph County. "It's obvious (the dog) is grieving."
The animal officer has brought Zelda home several times and said after hearing the heart-wrenching story, the Humane Society decided not to charge the family for Zelda's pickup.
"This is one of those situations where a little compassion is necessary," McGuire said. "I think this shows animals have feelings just like humans. They just can't talk."
On a recent November evening, Marci and David Reed leash Zelda and head to St. John's Cemetery, more than a mile from their house.
As soon as Zelda is out of the car, the dog pulls at her tether, leading Marci through the church parking lot and down the graveyard path toward a granite stone.
The dog sniffs frantically around the mementos placed around Josh's grave. She sits in front of the tombstone, as the Reeds point out cards and notes left by friends and family.
Above, the sun is sinking beneath the muted gray sky and an icy wind blows.
Zelda shivers.
Marci is suddenly struck with the memory of how much both Josh and Zelda hated the rain. The two would huddle together in the basement whenever there was thunder.
"We're going to get a fence," Marci says after awhile, holding Zelda's shaking body close. "I can't let something happen to her."
The family knows Zelda won't stop running, desperately wandering the dangerous roads in her never-ending search to find the friend she loved the most.
Staff writer Alicia Gallegos:
agallegos@sbtinfo.com
Boy's best Friend - Dog mourns loss of owner, 15
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