El Arca Animal Partido de Mar Chiquita is an animal rescue and shelter based out of Argentina. Though the shelter staff have seen quite a bit in their time there, none of them had encountered a story quite like their seasoned resident’s, Pakita. The gorgeous, chocolate brown dog was allegedly found roaming the streets of Argentina and was assumed to be homeless when they brought her into the rescue. Only time would eventually unfold a very different story for Pakita.

As time went on after Pakita was brought in, she slowly became more depressed, forlorn, and withdrawn. The sad dog was always being passed over for younger, friendlier pups. Before the shelter knew it, two full years had gone by without anyone so much as showing an interest in the sweet girl.

Unwilling to give up on the sad dog, the shelter volunteers continued to search for a forever home for Pakita.

Staffers came up with the idea to snap a few good pictures of Pakita to upload to social media in hopes to find the sad dog a forever home. However, even this simple task would prove challenging with the brown beauty. Still so forlorn and lonesome, it seemed impossible to get a photo of her where she didn’t look like the saddest girl on earth.

Finally, after countless pictures, shelter staff snapped a picture decent enough to share with the world. She almost looked like she was smiling. Okay…it was a smirk, at best, but it worked!

When shelter workers uploaded Pakita’s picture, the best they were hoping for was to find her a forever family.

What they never expected to happen, though, was for the photo to end up in front of the eyes of her real forever family! The family Pakita had before she was found wandering the streets and mistaken for a homeless dog.

“Immediately, we get a message from a woman saying that the dog was her son’s and that he had been looking for her,” recalled shelter worker, Silvia Ferreyra, in an interview with The Dodo.

The woman who reached out to the shelter was ecstatic, saying that her son thought Pakita was lost to him forever.

Pakita’s dad, Ariel Naveria, was so excited that Pakita, who had been missing for 2 years now, had potentially been found. Afraid to get his hopes too high, he showed up at Pakita’s shelter less than 24 hours after his mom gave him the news. He wanted to see if, indeed, it was his long lost dog.

As it turned out, Pakita needed a little confirmation of her own that this human that showed up was actually her dad.

When Naveria showed up at the shelter, one of the volunteers slowly walked Pakita out to him. While at first, it seems like Naveria is like any other stranger to the dog, something noticeably changes. Her attention rapidly shifts to him and she creeps in to smell her human.

Everyone there knew the moment that Pakita recognized him as her dad. They all saw it for themselves as her energy level suddenly took an insane spike after getting a whiff of Naveria. She couldn’t hold still and she just kept licking and kissing her dad in between bouts of falling to the ground for belly rubs.

Now she’s back in her real forever home and we have a feeling she won’t be leaving dad’s side again anytime soon. Thankfully, Pakita’s tear-jerking reaction to seeing her human again for the first time in 2 years was caught on camera and shared with the world.

To see the heartfelt moment Pakita and her dad were reunited, watch the video below.

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H/T: AnimaChannel