By Brandon O’Connor

The power of social media was on full display in Vicksburg Tuesday when the town came together to identify the owner of a dog that was severely injured when it was hit by a car on Fisher Ferry Road.

The dog, which was eventually identified as 7-month-old Catahoula Mix Remington, was struck by a car and suffered a compound fracture to his back left leg. He wasn’t wearing a tag, but Georgia Lynn of the Vicksburg-Warren County Humane Society quickly sprang into action to help identify his owner.

“It is hard when something like that happens and the dog has no ID and we have no idea where to go,” Lynn said. “We always want to find the owner. We do everything we can initially and the vet does everything they can, but you need to find the owner.”

Remington was immediately taken to Vicksburg Animal Hospital where he received treatment for pain and shock. In the meantime, Lynn used Facebook to spread the word about the accident and hopefully locate his owner.

The information was posted on The Vicksburg Post’s page, the Warren County Pets buy, sell or adopt page and others. It quickly spread like wildfire.

The post on The Vicksburg Post’s page reached over 23,000 people and been shared over 400 times and the post on the pet adoption page has been shared another 60 times, according to available statistics.

By 8:30 Tuesday night, the social media campaign has paid off, and Remington’s owner had been identified.

“The one that I actually first saw him on was the Vicksburg, Mississippi webpage,” Remington’s owner Allie Garrison said. “I was just scrolling through my newsfeed, and I scrolled past and was like ‘that looks like Remington.’’’

He had gotten lose the night before around 11 p.m. when she took him out to go the bathroom and hadn’t come home as he usually does.

“He will go three houses up, they have two dogs and he will go visit with them,” Garrison said. “The next morning he wasn’t on the back or front porch and I was looking for him, but I could only do so much before I had to go to work.”

After seeing the post, Garrison got in contact with Lynn and the animal hospital to begin the process of caring for him.

“I’m glad that we reached out to every social media available,” Lynn said. “It was a case where it took a village and the village came through.”

A full body x-ray on Wednesday showed that his back left leg will have to be amputated due to the severity of the injury and that he also suffered a broken hip that will require a second surgery. Garrison said that the major question now is whether he suffered an injury to his spine or any nerve damage that would hinder his quality of life. If not, the expectation is that he will recover following the surgeries to his leg.