Animals can be mind-blowingly smart. This restless dog led people to a strange house, and you won’t believe what they found there.
Rescuers from a local shelter were called to check out a homeless dog wandering the streets. She seemed weak and ill, and people were worried about her. It was also very clear that she was nursing babies. The good-hearted people tried to find the puppies and tried to feed the mom, but she just kept running away from them. They didn’t know how to help, and that was why they called for support.
The rescue team came out, but they didn’t have much more luck catching the dog. They gave her some food, and she quickly gobbled that up, but as soon as they tried to get close, she ran away. She would stop a short distance away and wait for them. Only later would they realize that she was trying to get them to follow her.
But that was when one of the rescue workers got a big shock. She realized that she knew this dog. It was Lucy, a dog that she had met before, but Lucy wasn’t acting like she did back when she was in the shelter the first time. She used to love people and loved nothing more than to cuddle, but now she was scared and aloof.
Lucy’s story was a sad one, and they never thought they would see her again. The woman called her by name, and that stopped her, and she seemed to recognize it, but she still wouldn’t come to them. She kept running in the same direction. The woman decided that they should try to follow Lucy. Maybe she would lead them to her puppies, and if they could reach them, it might be easier to get Lucy to come with them too. But they never expected what happened next.
They followed her, and she led them to a house. As soon as they started following, the dog wagged her tail and looked a lot happier. She was grateful. The people finally understood that she wanted them to go with her. But the house she stopped in front of was in shambles. It was far from other houses, and it was in terrible shape. The grass was overgrown, and some of the windows were missing.
But what they found inside was shocking. When Lucy was a tiny pup, she was found with her mom in an old building. The dogs were in terrible condition. Their mother had tried her best to keep the puppies safe, but they had been through a lot of trauma. Two of the puppies were doing well, but Lucy and her mother were both very sick.
Soon after they were saved, their mother started to deteriorate. She was fighting so hard to help her pups, but now that they were safe, all the fight had left her. She was too weak to fight her own body, and she died soon after. This devastated little Lucy, who was still glued to her mother’s side the entire time they were in the shelter. They had treated all her problems, but she was still very weak, and now she was depressed too.
The puppy wasn’t doing well. Her brother and sister were healthy and happy, and they were ready to be adopted. They were playing in their presence didn’t seem to give Lucy much comfort. Anyway, so when the two of them were adopted together, the shelter let them go.
Lucy still needed extra care, but being in the shelter wasn’t working. She needed closer attention, and she needed more love than they could give her. She loved to cuddle with the workers, and they held her as much as they could, but they had too much work to do to do this the whole day. She needed to be in a home. They were worried that she wouldn’t make it if they didn’t get her into one.
Luckily, one of their regular foster families was willing to open their home for Lucy. Bailey and her family fell in love with the pup as soon as they met her. Lucy was sweet, and she was happy to receive all the love that her new family could give her.
It was amazing to see how quickly she started to bond with Bailey. The best part was that she could be with her new foster mom at all times. Bailey worked from home some days, but her office was also happy for the puppy to come in with her. Her boss even kept snacks in the office in case Lucy decided to come for a visit. It was a great situation, and it had the desired effect. Lucy was starting to get better. Her health was picking up, and she was a lot happier.
One of the happiest days ever was when she suddenly grabbed one of the toys and shook it. She was playing with toys for the first time ever. The dog was becoming a happy puppy. It was really exciting. From that day on, she just got better, and she was leaving her traumatized past behind her. She believed that every person who she met was a friend.
Visitors to their house were met with excitement. She would bring her ball to anyone who was sitting down because she believed that they all wanted to play with her. And looking at her adorable little face, very few could resist giving in to her demands. They all loved her, but there was a special bond forming between Lucy and Bailey. They were getting very close.
One night there was rain and thunder, and Lucy got scared. She was running around, trying to find a safe spot to hide in, and she was shivering terribly. The poor pup was completely freaked out. They had never seen her like that, and they didn’t have anything to give her to calm her down. All Bailey could think to do was to pick the puppy up and carry her in her jacket.
Incredibly, this worked. The puppy calmed down almost right away, and she soon was asleep in her mom’s jacket. Before that, Bailey was still on the fence, but after that incident, she knew that they could find no better home for Lucy than right there with them. She was going to be their very first foster fail.
They had to keep her a few months after she had been officially adopted. Lucy and Bailey were playing outside in the front garden. It was a nice shady spot, and since their yard was fully fenced, she couldn’t wander off.
She was going to get spayed the next day, and Bailey wanted to spend some time with her. Then the phone rang, and Bailey went inside to answer it. She was gone for only a few minutes, but by the time she came back, Lucy was gone. They had no idea where she could have gone.
She couldn’t get over the fence on her own, and when they checked the cameras, they saw someone picking her up over the fence. She was stolen. She trusted everyone, and it wasn’t hard to get her to come to them. Her family couldn’t believe it.
As a young dog, Lucy still looked like she might have been a purebred Labrador, but her mother wasn’t a lab. Her biggest value was in the love she gave all of them, but that probably wasn’t why she was stolen. It broke their hearts. They searched for her everywhere they could think of. They put up flyers, and they even offered a reward, but there was no sign of Lucy anywhere. She was just gone. It was terrible, and they wouldn’t give up hope.
Bailey wanted to believe that they would find Lucy. After all, the thieves would eventually realize that she wasn’t a purebred, and that her puppies would not fetch a lot of money. But when the first thunderstorm of the season hit, and she had no idea where her puppy was or if she was scared, she couldn’t help but cry all afternoon.
They did everything they could to bring Lucy home, but without any luck. Now, it had been almost a year, and they had lost the hope they had held on to for so long, until that strange day when a dog was spotted running around a neighborhood miles from Bailey’s home.
The local shelter worked in the area, and when they were called about the dog who was weak and ill, they quickly sent a team to help. That was when one of the women realized that the mother dog running around them was Lucy, the lost dog they had been searching for.
She was running in the streets, and she had something that she had to show the rescuers before she could allow them to look after her. They tried to peek inside one of the windows of the house she had led them to, and what they found shocked everyone. The rooms were filled with dog crates, and there were loads of dogs and puppies stuck inside tiny crates. It was sickening.
They had to try and save all these dogs. Lucy tried to go back inside the house, but they stopped her. They wanted to keep her safe, but she was frantic to get inside, and they couldn’t understand why. They could finally get close to her to make sure that she didn’t go somewhere that could put her in danger. They put her inside the rescue vehicle inside one of their crates. She wouldn’t be able to slip out and put herself in danger, but she was not happy with this. She was crying and moaning the entire time. She wouldn’t even eat the snacks they were trying to feed her.
But Lucy wasn’t their only priority at that moment. They had to figure out a way to save all the dogs in the house. They weren’t sure exactly what their situation was or why they were there, but having that many dogs all in enclosures in a terrible house couldn’t be good. The shelter had a police division that they often worked with in criminal cases. They couldn’t legally go into the house on their own, and they needed help.
The police team found that the house was listed as abandoned, and no one should have been living there. That made it a bit easier to get access without a lot of red tape. The people using it were trespassing and breaking the law already, but the situation could still be very dangerous. The rescue team couldn’t go in on their own; they needed help.
They moved the vehicle around the corner to make sure that they didn’t spook the people in the house, and then they waited for help to arrive. It was very frustrating to wait for the police, especially with Lucy, who was still howling in the back of their vehicle. They wanted to help her as much as they could.
Eventually, the police arrived, and they were set up to go inside the house. Even the view from outside could not prepare them for what they found. It was shocking. Each room was filled with crates of dogs from top to bottom. Some dogs were kept with puppies inside their crates, and others were the mothers who were set to give birth, but they were all in terrible condition. They were super thin and weak, and some of the older puppies were full of bite marks.
These were people who had worked in various challenging situations involving animals before, but this was the worst they had ever seen. They only found two guys in the house, and they were quick to spill the beans. They were only looking after the dogs for a criminal ring that was using them for all sorts of terrible things. Puppies that could pass as purebred dogs were sold for massive amounts of money as pets. They were the ones who had the best shot at a good life, but their mothers were bred again soon after, and they all became malnourished and sick.
Fleas and mites covered most of the dogs. Other dogs that couldn’t be sold were used in a dog fighting ring, some just to aggravate big dogs, and others to fight. It was a horrid situation. They needed to track down the brains of the operation, but first, they had to save the dogs and get them some help.
Lucy was still crying, and soon they would find out why. They took the dogs out in their crates, and they started to load them up. They would take them to the shelter to be assessed and treated. They weren’t sure how they would care for all these dogs, but they were going to give them as much of a shot as they possibly could. But they didn’t expect what would happen when they brought out one particular crate.
Suddenly, Lucy’s cries turned desperate. She was trying to jump against the crate, trying to get out. They were scared that she was going to injure herself. Then they finally caught on to what she was doing. The crate they had just loaded up was only filled with puppies, and all of those puppies looked a lot like Lucy. She was trying to get to her babies. They were giving tiny moans too. They started to place the pups with her, and she calmed down right away. They all started nursing and soon fell asleep. Their family had been through a lot, but at least they were together now, in the same crate. But would they manage to stay that way?
Lucy had a family that desperately hoped to see her again, but they didn’t plan on her having five extra pups that came with the package. Would they be able to handle it all, or was Lucy going to be abandoned again? The shelter team had a lot of animals to care for, but sadly, they would not manage to save all of them. Some were so sick that they just couldn’t get them healthy.
Many of the dogs with bite marks also had infections. Most of the dogs they saved were malnourished or had other health issues. It was a massive endeavor to help them all, but they tried. Sadly, some of the dogs were lost because they were too sick, and others were in such terrible conditions that they were only suffering with little hope of recovery. And others were very aggressive, and they couldn’t get close enough to treat them. Making the choices on who had a chance to be helped and who they had to let go was gut-wrenching.
They were grateful that many families opened their homes to fosters, and other shelters stepped in and took some of the dogs that….
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