Dog finds new home after owners die in Texas tornado

Two weeks ago, David and Brenda Tapley were killed when a tornado hit their home in Van, Texas.

A 14-year-old neighbour found the couple in their collapsed home the next morning. David Tapley, a retired police officer, had one arm stretched towards his wife, his other wrapped around their beloved dog.

The dog, an eight-year-old Great White Pyrenees, was still alive.

The dog was taken to Nicholas’ Pet Haven where she quickly found a new home with Michelle Shockley, a zoo supervisor and shelter volunteer who helped with the dog’s rescue.

“I was sitting in the back of the pick-up and she came out on my lap,” Shockley recalled. “She was just exhausted and very traumatized.”

She decided that day to adopt the dog.

“She was adopted out today to a wonderful young lady and is making herself at home. She has a cranial head contusion but is expected to make a full recovery,” the no-kill shelter posted on Facebook.

The dog also suffered an inner ear injury and appeared to have difficulty balancing.

Following the advice of a behavioural psychologist, Shockley renamed the dog Emma.

“Emma went and crawled up underneath his [her former owner’s] arm for comfort, so a very sad situation — but she’s going to have a good home,” Cindy Nash, the director of Nicholas’ Pet Haven, told ABC News.

Shockley’s mother, Jo, said that the dog is starting to regain her appetite.

“She’s a little underweight, but she could have been a real active dog,” Jo Shockley told ABC News. “They’re known to be guardians, and protectors. They’re known to protect things that are more helpless than they are.”

The Tapleys are believed to have owned 10 dogs, seven of whom survived the tornado. One was taken in by the couple’s grown children, both Emma and an Australian shepherd mix have been adopted through Nicholas’ Pet Haven, and the remaining dogs — two long-haired dachshunds with congestive heart failure, a “cute as a button” Pomeranian and a terrier mix — are still looking for new homes.