Mother Nature's Role in Rescue

Callie, a one year old lab/greyhound mix, was found as a stray by a family. She was extremely thin and had some skin issues so they took her to the vet and found that she had a chip. The family and the vet's office made several attempts to call the owners, but the phone had been disconnected. Callie had been taught basic commands and was housebroken, got along with the two dogs already present, and she started creeping into their hearts right off. The vet's office suggested that they send a letter to the address and give the original owners 10 days to claim her. While this was transpiring, one of their employees got hold of me and asked if I would take her in if the original owners didn't claim her. The new family had two dogs and had decided that three was just too many.

I immediately started making arrangements to work with a local rescue that has been absolutely wonderful about helping out. Since Callie was now 2 hours away, transporting her would have to wait for the ten days to go by, and then till the weekend to make the trip. Meanwhile, I asked her new family to find out as much about her and her veterinary records as possible. We found that she was spayed, vaccinated but due for rabies and distemper shots. The new family had their vet treat her skin issues, test her for heartworms, got her flea preventive, and put her on heartworm preventive. When the 10 days were up, no one had responded, and I got an email stating that they needed to bring her to me as the longer they had her, the harder it was going to be to part with her. I suggested that they find a rescue closer to them and ask to have them post her on Petfinder, so that they could participate in her adoption. After all, they obviously loved her and were taking excellent care of her. They could foster her for the rescue till she was adopted. The family said they needed to move her on as they were getting extremely attached to her and arrangements were made to transport her to me over the weekend. Silently I prayed that they would change their minds and decide to keep her, as they were obviously a great match.

Good old Mother Nature helped with some divine intervention --- we had our first big snowstorm of the winter with snow, subzero temperatures, blowing snow. Main highways were reported as snow and ice packed and driving was discouraged. We told them to wait, and we would make other arrangements.

This morning I got an email stating that the new family had had the weekend to talk things over, and since they love Callie so much and she has been with them for three weeks and it's been working out just fine --- they are going to keep her!