our pets: RESCUE STORY
Finding Juno
By ETHAN EVANS
J
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uno’s story is both heart-wrenching and
heart-warming. It begins with a daughter’s
love for her father and ends with fate reunit-
ing a woman with her dog.
Tara Tullos is a Florida resident who was
badly bitten by a dog as a young girl.
“475 stitches and half an inch away
from a main artery in my neck. I was lucky
to be alive,” she said.
After countless corrective surgeries and
time to heal, her father, Newell Tuttle, aka
“Dusty,” gave her a pup, “to learn not to
be afraid [of dogs].” His name was Juno
Sr., and he was an amazing dog. Flash
forward many yea rs, Juno Sr. has passed,
and our Juno’s story begins.
Tullos adopted the second Juno from a
Florida shelter the very day her father was
diagnosed with stage-four colon cancer.
“He was the exact replica of my former
pup that passed,” Tullos said.
She named him Juno after her childhood
dog, and he immediately brought light into
her dying father’s eyes. Juno helped Tullos
Loosing a Heavenly Pup
cope with the death of her father. When her father was in his
final days, Tullos remembers him saying things like “I can’t
believe you’ve been with me all these years, Juno,” as he
confused him with the family’s former dog.
On one fateful afternoon during a storm in August of
2016, Juno somehow got out and was lost.
“When my dad died, Juno was all I had left of him. …
When he got out I was devastated,” Tullos recalled.
Tullos and her spouse Cary, put flyers all over the area and
called every shelter and hospital in town for him. Somehow
over the course of a year, Juno went from Florida all the way
to our very own Weatherford-Parker County Animal Shelter.
Another Florida family found Juno after the storm, took him
in, and then moved to Texas for work.
It was here that Juno was reluctantly surrendered to the
Weatherford/Parker County Animal Shelter because that
Florida family had to move again.
Thankfully, Juno was micro chipped and a staffmember
from the shelter called Tullos and told her that her dog was
safe, ready to be returned to her.
Juno was transported back to Florida where they were
lovingly reunited. Thanks to the help of the WPCAS, Tullos,
her family, and Juno all live a happy existence once again.
Tullos and Juno’s reunited friendship is her father’s gift to