COLLEGE STATION, Texas — How to you measure the bonds of friendship?
For Megan and Bella there’s a few belly rubs counted in that equation.
Megan Murray is a resident of Bryan-College Station, and Bella Grace is her emotional support dog she from the Brenham animal shelter in November 2019.
On July 11, 2020 they were riding in their car on the way home from Austin when life as they knew it, changed in an instant.
Megan said she was 10 miles from home when she saw the front lights of a vehicle coming toward her and she had, "just seconds to think what to do and what is this.”
A man, suspected of driving drunk, was going the wrong way on Highway Six and hit Megan's car head on.
That’s when her airbags went off.
“I was in shock. My adrenaline was going," Megan said, "I remember unbuckling my seat belt, looking back, thinking I was gonna see Bella’s guts in the back seat. That was the worst part.”
After a witness and an officer helped Megan out of her car and got her to the hospital, Megan realized Bella wasn’t in her car and had run away from the crash site.
Megan said after her trip to the hospital, she and her dad went out to look for Bella until 4 a.m. that night.
They were not able to find her.
Weeks passed with Megan and other people in Bryan-College Station sharing flyers and possible sightings of Bella on social media.
Megan: “I spent three weeks non stop searching, sun up to sundown, sometimes until one in the morning.”
Megan even camped out at the church where Bella was spotted and saw her for a brief moment that night.
"She was hanging out on Highway 21 nearH-E-B., and she was so frightened and scared that my poor little baby ran," she said, “my whole world just crushed that night.”
Before Megan even thought about giving up, help arrived.
Tonya Arceneaux and her organization, But Now I'm Found, heard about Megan and Bella and had to help.
Their volunteers specialize in helping find fearful, skittish lost dogs
Arceneaux's team asked people to tone down sightings and stop the searches so they could narrow down a spot to find Bella.
After about a week of planning an overnight trap was set up where Bella was last seen on Tabor road, and they found her.
Megan was there in a heartbeat.
“When I saw her, I still couldn’t believe that it was her,” she said, “in her eyes I could tell that she didn’t realize who I was, and then, as soon as her eyes popped back up, I knew then that she knew I was her mommy.”
Now, after almost a month apart, Megan and Bella grace are inseparable again.
“I’m just so grateful," she said, "I couldn’t have done this without the help and support from the ladies from Austin and all my new friends and family in B-CS.”
In this time where it seems like everything is going wrong, Megan realizes how precious it is to have this one happy ending.
“I don’t know who rescued who, because she really rescued me at a time where I needed her the most,” she said.