A week later, he too had exhausted the obvious approaches. Snoopy was too frail to be shipped in the unheated baggage compartment of a plane. A professional animal transporting company wanted 665 to bring her east. Shipping companies refused to be responsible for her. Rod hung up from his latest call and shook his head. "I wish the old-time Pony Express was still in existence," he remarked to his assistant, Skip. "They' d have brought the dog back."
"They' d have passed her along from one driver to another. It would' ve been a Puppy Express," Skip joked.
Rod thought for a minute. "By golly, that maybe the answer." He got out a map and a list of animal shelters in Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana, and began telephoning. Could he enlist enough volunteers to put together a Puppy Express to transport Snoopy by stages across five states? Would enough people believe it mattered so for a little seventeen-year-old dog to be reunited with her family that they' d drive a hundred or so miles west to pick her up and another hundred or so miles east to deliver her to the next driver?
A week later, Rod called the Topps. "The Puppy Express starts tomorrow. Snoopy' s coming home!" he told Nancy jubilantly.
The animal control officer in Rock Springs had volunteered to be Snoopy' s first driver. When he pulled up outside the clinic, the vet bundled Snoopy in a sweater and carried her to the car. "She' s got a cold," the vet said, "so keep her warm. Medicine and instructions and the special food for her kidney condition are in the shopping bag."
She put the little dog on the seat and held out her hand. Snoopy placed her paw in it. "You' re welcome, old girl," the vet said, shaking it. "It' s been a pleasure taking care of you. The best of luck. Get home safely!"
They drove the 108 miles to Rawlings, Wyoming. There they rendezvoused with a woman named Cathy, who' d come 118 miles from Casper to meet them. Cathy laughed when she saw Snoopy. "What a funny-looking little serious creature you are to be traveling in such style," she teased. "Imagine, private chauffeurs across five states." But that evening, when she phoned Rod in Indiana to report that Snoopy had arrived safely in Casper, she called her "a dear old girl" , and admitted that, "If she were mine, I' d go to a lot of trouble to get her back, too."
Snoopy went to bed at Cathy' s house a nondescript little brown-and-white dog, very long in the tooth, and woke the next morning a celebrity. Word of the seventeen-year-old puppy with a bad cold who was being shuttled across mid-America to rejoin her family had reached the news media. After breakfast, dazed by the camera but, as always, polite, Snoopy sat on a desk at the Casper Humane Society and obligingly cocked her head and showed off the new leash that was a gift from Cathy. And that night, in Fort Wayne, the Topps were caught between laughter and tears as they saw their old girl peer out at them from the television set.
With the interview behind her, Snoopy set out for North Platte, 350 miles away, in the company of a humane society official in Casper who had volunteered for the longest single hop on Snoopy' s journey. The two of them stopped overnight and arrived in North Platte at noon the next day. More reporters and cameramen awaited them, but as soon as she' d been interviewed. Snoopy was back on the road for a 138-mile trip to Grand Island.
Twice more that day she was passed along, arriving in Lincoln, Nebraska, after dark and so tired that she curled up in the first doggie bed she saw despite the growls of its rightful owner.
With a gift of a new wicker sleeping basket and a note "Happy to be part of the chain reuniting Snoopy with her family," Nebraska passed the little dog on to Iowa. After a change of car and driver in Des Moines, Snoopy sped on and by nightfall was in Cedar Rapids.
At nightfall of her fifth day on the road, Snoopy was in Chicago, her next-to-last stop. Whether it was that she was getting close to home or just because her cold had run its course, she was clearly better. Indeed, the vet who examined her told the reporters that, "For an old lady who' s been traveling all week and has come more than 1 300 miles, she' s in grand shape. She' s going to make it home tomorrow just fine." The Topps, watching the nightly update of Snoopy' s journey on the Fort Wayne TV station, broke into cheers.
The next day was Saturday, March 17th. In honor of Saint Patrick' s Day, the little dog sported a new green coat with a green derby pinned to the collar. The Chicago press did one last interview with her, and then Snoopy had nothing to do but nap until Rod' s assistant, Skip, arrived from Fort Wayne to drive her the 160 miles home.
Hours before Snoopy and Skip were expected in Fort Wayne, the Topps were waiting excitedly at the humane shelter. Jodi and Matthew worked on a room-sized banner that, when it was unfurled, read: WELCOME HOME, SNOOPY! FROM ROCK SPRINGS, WYOMING, TO FORT WAYNE, INDIANA, VIA THE PUPPY EXPRESS, with her route outlined across the bottom and their signatures in the corner. Reporters from the Fort Wayne TV stations and newspaper, the Topps, friends and family and the shelter' s staff all crowded into the shelter' s waiting room.
Somewhere amid the fuss and confusion, Rod found time to draw Nancy aside and give her word that Snoopy would be arriving home with her boarding bill marked "Paid in Full ". An anonymous friend of the Humane Society in Casper had taken care of it.
Then the CB radio crackled, and Skip' s voice filled the crowded room. "Coming in! The Puppy Express is coming in!"
Nancy and Joe and the children rushed out in the subfreezing air, the reporters on their heels. Around the comer came the pickup truck, lights flashing, siren sounding. "Snoopy' s home!" screamed the children, "Snoopy' s home!"
