RESCUE BECOMES THE RESCUER

Here’s a story, about a lovely lady, who was busy with no home of her own. She had hair of gold, like her mother, but she was all alone. Till this one day when this lady met this fellow, and they knew it was much more than a hunch. This rescue would become family, and that’s the day we all went out to lunch. (I couldn’t think of a crafty word that rhymes with bunch. In my defense, it’s harder than it sounds)

But seriously, I want to tell you the story of how a lowly dog left to die got rescued, made a miraculous recovery, and ended up a rescuer. L.E. is a Boxer mix we found lying on the side of the road in a grassy esplanade. She was so skinny that her hips, spine, and ribs were sticking out. The grass was taller than she was. She could barely lift her head and couldn’t stand up. I picked her up and brought her to my vet. She would surely have died that day.

He said he had never seen an animal with as many parasites. She had hookworms, roundworms, flatworms, tapeworms, and even worse – heartworms. She had an injured hip and came down with mange. She spent a solid week at the vet getting fixed up. I came and sat with her every night to let her know someone cared. Two weeks after we brought her home we found out she was pregnant. She was so sick, we had to take the puppies from her.

A month later I took her to the ranch and she ran down to the river with our other rescue, a Mountain Cur named Medina. I heard some yelling down there and went to investigate. An older man was sitting by the river with a cute six-week old German Shepherd puppy. My two dogs were sniffing the puppy. He asked me if they bite. I told him one did not but the other (L.E.), I wasn’t sure about. She was a street dog after all. It turned out that she was not a biter. Far from it.

Everyone went swimming except L.E. Ever seen a Boxer swim? It’s not pretty. L.E. was nosing the little puppy back to shore because it was trying to go in the river to be with the older man. The puppy finally got away from L.E. and went into the river. The only problem was, it didn’t know how to swim. It started crying and L.E., who had probably never swam before, jumped in the river, swam up to the puppy, turned around and let it crawl on her back. She swam it to shore. Everyone was so far away, we would have never made it back in time to save the puppy. We all watched in amazement. Even though she never had her puppies, her motherly instincts kicked in. The rescue became the rescuer.

It was a beautiful thing.