DE PERE, Wis. (WFRV) – Dogs are truly a man’s best friend, or woman’s.

One De Pere woman wants people to know if they lose a dog, they aren’t alone. Animals have been a part of Bette Anderson’s life for as long as she can remember.

“Over the years. I’ve done animal welfare work. I’ve helped start humane societies. I was one of the ten people that started the shelter in Green Bay,” says Anderson, author of Home at Last: True Lost Dog Stories.

Anderson was instrumental in starting the Bay Area Humane Society and the Door County Humane Society, which are now known as the Wisconsin Humane Society’s Green Bay and Door County campuses.

In her spare time, she delivers pet food and other essentials to animals on the Menominee Reservation in Menominee county, one of the poorest counties in Wisconsin. Anderson credits Dr. Steve DeGrave for organizing veterinarians for spay and neuter clinics on the reservation.

Now retired, she wants to help even more people. Anderson published her first book, Home at Last: True Lost Dog Stories, in 2018. In the book, she recounts her own, personal experiences of losing her dog, Ginger.

“I went back in the house and I came back out and Ginger was gone. We have a busy street out front, we have a river down here, and it was partially open with water rushing by with chunks of ice, and I was just panicking. I looked for about an hour and finally I called my husband’s hunting buddy, Jake. The two of us looked for three hours, and he finally found her down about a half block waiting on somebody’s porch. It really made me know what it was like to lose a pet,” says Anderson.

Anderson needed some encouragement from a close friend to start writing the book, which has been 25 years in the making.

“I had a friend and she kept telling me that I should write a book about the experiences I had with lost dogs because they were so interesting and they might help other people,” says Anderson.

Home at Last: True Lost Dog Stories was published by Page Publishing.

For more information on Home at Last: True Lost Dog Stories, click here.