Kelly Clarkson with dogs Joplin (far left) and Security
Jeff Lipsky
In a letter to Kix Brooks, host of radio's American Country Countdown, Clarkson shared that her dog Joplin ran away on New Year's Eve after becoming startled by fireworks.
"I lost it (like a little girl) and started bawling when she [Clarkson's sister] told me," Clarkson wrote. "Seriously, I was so dramatic (hard to believe, I know), but I don't have children and [my dogs] are my babies that I sleep with every night." Joplin, a black poodle mix that Clarkson adopted in 2011, doesn't bark, and is "shy and skittish," so the search was daunting enough. But added to that was the fear that Joplin had already been taken by a coyote or "hit by a semi." Still, a determined Clarkson began looking around her Texas property for Joplin.
She walked for hours with a neighbor's dogs across undeveloped land nearby and was on the verge of giving up when the canines jumped into a pond and started swimming. Clarkson looked over and saw none other than Joplin.
"I swear, I can't believe I'm admitting this but I ran through the shallow part of the pond ... yelling for him as if he were the last living thing on the planet," Clarkson wrote. She cut him free of some vines he had been tangled in and carried him home.
"I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT HAPPENED! IT IS LIKE A MOVIE!" she exclaimed, calling the incident a miracle. "Yes, I might be too attached to my dogs and highly sensitive, but I don't care. I love them!"
