A Sad Rescue Story

Warning; yesterday was not a good day and although I will spare you all the graphic details it won't be hard to imagine it.

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Rescue is a big part of my life, and one that I rarely talk about on here. Mostly because I have a rescue blog so I don't really feel the need to tell the same stories twice. Yesterday was a pretty rough day though and I am still having a hard time getting over it. I was thinking that maybe writing it all out might help. I didn't want to put much detail into the actual rescue blog site as I am not sure that people really want to know. But here, this is my space and I know that if you want to read it you will, and if you don't you will pass it over. And that is okay.

Natalie and I went to the reserve yesterday to take food, and to see if there were any younger dogs that we could catch. We can't trap the feral ones as we don't have foster homes who can deal with that kind of dog- so unfortunately we are limited to dogs that with a little bit of rehab and time are adoptable. Anyway- so we aren't even in Stand Off yet and we see three different dogs in the ditches- one, a young dog, who is hobbling on three legs. The next one was so skinny his face was sunken in, and the third one again, limping. And then we see dead dog number 1. A puppy, with a rope around his neck. This was not a good sign.

Onward we go. We get into standoff and as we drive up the dump road I can see a dog standing at the top of one of the piles- watching us come. As soon as we are close he jumps off and hightails it. They are so afraid of people. We dump food and start driving around, looking for signs of puppies. We find nothing. Well, except for two more dead dogs. But nothing living. Which is a good thing in a way.

We head back into town. It is hard to describe but just imagine that you are in a third world country. There are houses that are burnt down, windows broken, kids playing on the road- dogs...everywhere. Starving, thin, broken, beaten. It is horrible.

We have a contact on the reserve and we stop there to ask if she knows of any puppies, or dogs that are desperate. She takes us to a Mom dog and her pups. A different rescue group had tried already to get the pups- but the mom is quite aggressive. We decide to try. We succesfully get two, but the third is just too afraid. We move on.

There are lots of gorgeous dogs there, of course most of them are mixed breeds, there are more dogs than you could imagine- everywhere you look there is a dog or two. No one spays the dogs out there so the continue to breed. We tried to get one smaller dog- a little tri-color spaniel type cross. But when I tried to scoop her up she was spooked and took off. Many of them have never been touched before.

We leave the town and head out towards the college- this is where we found Tim Bit last time we went out. We don't see any dogs on the highway- just one farther away crossing the fields. At the college we see a little black dog. We decide that we will feed her but that we won't take her. After all she is black. Black dogs don't get adopted. (It's suprisingly true!!!) We leave food and move on. We find no more dogs. On the way back the little black pup is sitting. As though she is waiting. Natalie gets out and the pup eagerly licks her hands for more food. We decide we can't leave her.

We go straight through town again on the way out and as always I am saddened by the dogs we had to leave behind. The mom and her baby, the young shaggy pup that had dissapeared when we turned around. This tri color dog who I scared away. It is always so hard, and sometimes I ask myself why I put myself through it. But you know, we saved three dogs and they are guaranteed to have happy, long lives; that makes it worth it.