Woman Adopts Dog She Fostered Years Earlier After He's Found as a Stray: 'I Knew I Had to Get Him' (Exclusive)

"I've had about 15 fosters since 2020 and Nacho has been the hardest to say goodbye to," Katelyn Severt tells PEOPLE

A woman has gone viral on TikTok after sharing that a dog she fell in love with as a foster is now permanently her pet, years later.

Her video — captioned, "Reintroducing Nacho - an adoption story 4.5 years in the making" — has now racked up more than 126,000 views, and offers a look at how one foster dog came back into her life, despite the odds.

Katelyn Severt, 32, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview that she first started fostering dogs in early 2020, when she became a remote worker during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"At the time, I didn't have any dogs or kids so I had the perfect low-traffic home to let 'Diamond Dogs' decompress," she says, adding that "Diamond Dogs" is a term used by some shelters to describe dogs who are "either extremely shy or very rowdy and need just a little extra 'polish' to shine."

It was in that first year of fostering that she met Nacho, who came to her via the Nebraska Humane Society.

"He was my third, and most rowdy foster," she adds.

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After three months of fostering Nacho, he was adopted — a bittersweet moment for Severt, who says she had forged "such a bond with him."

"I've had about 15 fosters since 2020 and Nacho has been the hardest to say goodbye to," she adds.

In 2023, she moved from Nebraska back to her hometown in Ohio — but Nacho remained on her mind.

A few months after her own dog Cash died unexpectedly due to a ruptured tumor. fate intervened when a friend messaged her a screenshot of a familiar face on the Nebraska Humane Society's website.

"In September 2024, a friend in Omaha messaged me a screenshot of Nacho being back on the Nebraska Humane Society's website. His name was changed, but the photos were ones I had taken of him when he was in foster with me and my friend recognized them right away," she says.

So she reached out to some of the volunteers at the shelter, and learned that Nacho had been found as a stray, and had gone unclaimed for more than 40 days.  

After learning that Nacho's owners had been notified and still did not claim him, "I knew I had to go get him, so that's what I did," she says. "One friend picked him up from the shelter and fostered him for three nights until I could drive there, another friend drove him halfway to Ohio, and my dad drove with me to help video the reunion."

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She continues: "I was really struggling after my dog, Cash, passed away. I live alone, so my house was just so incredibly quiet. It sounds silly, but I truly think Cash helped put all the pieces back together so Nacho could come back into my life."

Meanwhile, Severt continues fostering other dogs — an arrangement that Nacho has taken to well.

"Nacho does so well with other dogs," Severt says. "He loves to romp around with some, and pass out on the couch with others. He shares his new home so incredibly well."

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