Pets
WATCH: LI Woman Meets Dog Missing For 5 Years, Found In TN
The Wantagh native, cancer survivor, found out her lost bulldog ended up in a Tennessee shelter, after disappearing from Long Beach in 2017.
![Jen Costa, from Wantagh, reunited with her lost English bulldog five years after she went missing as a puppy from Long Beach.](https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/75752/20220120/021003/styles/patch_image/public/img-5673___20140446666.jpg)
WANTAGH, NY—A happy reunion five years in the making took place this week for one Long Island woman, far from home.
Five years after Jen Costa's Olde English Bulldog, Azzurra Diamante, went missing from Long Beach, she got a call from an animal shelter in Henderson, Tennessee that her dog was located.
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Costa, who survived oral cancer, traveled 1,000 miles to find her lost dog. The dog was microchipped, which helped the Tennessee shelter locate Costa.
She embarked on the 16-hour drive from New York on Friday.
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She told ABC News that her first plans were to give the dog a bath and then take her out to dinner.
Costa told Patch that she's staying with the long-lost pup in Tennessee for a bit longer to get her spayed.
"I’m also trying to raise money so that I can get my own place as I cannot bring Azzurra back home to Queens," she said.
She started a GoFundMe fundraiser page to help with that goal.
"I live with my elderly grandma and it’s just too much for her to have two dogs in the house. So unfortunately that’s another reason why I haven’t come back home yet, [I'm] trying to figure things out."
But the reunion itself went off without a hitch, she reported.
"She’s already ready to go; she didn’t skip a beat. She remembered how we used to roll and she said 'Mama let’s go!' And yes she did remember me— she kept giving me her paw and kissing my face," Costa posted on Facebook.
Costa, 37, now lives in Queens, lost her tongue due to stage 4 oral cancer and was once confined to a wheelchair, weighing 600 pounds.
"It was amazing. I mean, I just can't believe I'm here, that she's really here," Costa told ABC News.
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