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Joy

In a 'Christmas miracle,' family reunited with their dog found 60 miles away in the cold woods

She ran away on the 4th of July because she got scared.

lost dog michigan, livonia post office, dogs and fireworks

A dog on a cold mountain trail.

The 4th of July may be more than half a year away, but it bears repeating that the holiday is a very stressful time for dogs, cats and animals with hypersensitive hearing. According to Psychology Today, a dog’s sense of hearing is four times as powerful as a human's. So, what we can hear 20 feet away, they can hear from 80.

Dogs can also hear far more than we do because they’re attuned to a higher frequency of sounds. That’s why the loud bangs, pops and booms of the 4th of July are so terrifying to a dog. According to NPR, pet shelters experience a huge influx of dogs around the fourth because many get scared and run away from their homes.

We’re sharing a story from WXYZ Detroit because it’s a reminder of how sensitive dogs are to fireworks, but it also has a happy ending.


Last summer, Andrea and Pablo Campos dropped their dog Tawny off at a daycare in Ingham County, Michigan, en route to a vacation in Traverse City about three hours away. While they were on vacation they got a call that Tawny had escaped the facility by scaling an 8-foot-high fence. The people at the facility believe she may have been spooked by the fireworks.

The family quickly canceled their vacation and returned home to find their missing dog. “We went door to door to people’s houses and just looking for weeks and weeks and weeks and she was nowhere to be found," Pablo told WXYZ.

Unbeknown to the Campos family, Tawny traveled 60 miles away from their home and was living in the woods, behind a post office in Livonia. The postal workers would feed Tawny from time to time but as it got colder, they decided she needed to be somewhere warm.

Postal workers Steven Persyn, Dave Brisco, Adam Kaminski and Jason Sobieski worked with the South Lyon Murphy Lost Animal Recovery to rescue the dog. “I can say there’s not a postal person I’ve met that doesn’t love animals,” a representative for the animal rescue wrote on Facebook. “Thank the lord for our post office!”

At the animal rescue, they found that Tawny had a microchip and they were able to locate her family. The animal shelter says that Tawny was recovered six years to the date that she was adopted by the Campos family.


The Campos family said that it’s a “Christmas miracle” that Tawny was able to make her way home. “We considered her a princess that needed lots of pampering. And somehow she’s managed to live on her own and make it," Pablo said.

“I know there’s so many cliches talking about Christmas miracles, but we really, actually got one," Andrea added.

Tawny’s story is a touching Christmas story and also a poignant reminder about the dangers of dogs and fireworks. But there’s another lesson that the South Lyon Murphy Lost Animal Recovery would like everyone to remember as well. “THIS HAPPENED BECAUSE SHE WAS MICROCHIPPED!” they emphatically wrote on Facebook. “Get a microchip, and then follow through and register it!”

The gaze of the approving Boomer.

Over the past few years, Baby Boomers (1946 to 1964) have been getting a lot of grief from the generations that came after them, Gen X (1965 to 1980), Millenials (1981 to 1996), and now, Gen Z (1997 to 2012). Their grievances include environmental destruction, wealth hoarding, political polarization, and being judgemental when they don’t understand how hard it is for younger people to make it in America these days.

Every Baby Boomer is different, so it's wrong to paint them all with a broad brush. But it’s undeniable that each generation shares common values, and some are bound to come into conflict.

However, life in 2023 isn’t without its annoyances. Many that came about after the technological revolution put a phone in everyone’s hands and brought a whole new host of problems. Add the younger generations' hands-on approach to child rearing and penchant for outrage, and a lot of moden life has become insufferanble.

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And then there are the kids were simply born for the spotlight. You know them when you see them.

When Dirkco Jansen van Nieuwenhuizen hopped on stage with all of the other brothers and sisters of the dance students at René’s Art of Dance in South Africa, no one expected a viral sensation. According to Capetown Etc, it was the school's year-end concert, and siblings were invited to come up and dance to Bernice West’s Lyfie—a popular song in Afrikaans. And Dirkco, who goes by Klein Kwagga, took the assignment and ran with it.

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Lots of people give plenty of advice to help you cope in the early days but after the baby arrives, the focus shifts to solely the baby. It's obviously not a deliberate shift. Babies are just more shiny and new that the parents. But not everyone forgets about the parents once baby makes their grand entrance–some go out of their way to make sure the parents feel supported.

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Identity

Formerly enslaved man's response to his 'master' wanting him back is a literary masterpiece

"I would rather stay here and starve — and die, if it come to that — than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters."

A photo of Jordan Anderson.

In 1825, at the approximate age of 8, Jordan Anderson (sometimes spelled "Jordon") was sold into slavery and would live as a servant of the Anderson family for 39 years. In 1864, the Union Army camped out on the Anderson plantation and he and his wife, Amanda, were liberated. The couple eventually made it safely to Dayton, Ohio, where, in July 1865, Jordan received a letter from his former owner, Colonel P.H. Anderson. The letter kindly asked Jordan to return to work on the plantation because it had fallen into disarray during the war.

On Aug. 7, 1865, Jordan dictated his response through his new boss, Valentine Winters, and it was published in the Cincinnati Commercial. The letter, entitled "Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master," was not only hilarious, but it showed compassion, defiance, and dignity. That year, the letter would be republished in theNew York Daily Tribune and Lydia Marie Child's "The Freedman's Book."

The letter mentions a "Miss Mary" (Col. Anderson's Wife), "Martha" (Col. Anderson's daughter), Henry (most likely Col. Anderson's son), and George Carter (a local carpenter).

Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

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