Family adopted a perfect dog. Then a neighbor visit changed their lives.

Leia came from a puppy mill and during a raid on that puppy mill she was rescued oh no at about two weeks old we adopted her from a shelter in Maryland she was so cute and so sweet and so gentle it's a big sweetheart it's okay [Music] on October 11th of 2022 my husband took her to visit a neighbor someone who didn't live there left a door open and Leia just walked outside I think she got the scent of maybe some deer in the area and chased them pretty quickly everyone was looking for her but couldn't find her she disappeared over a week ago and we're trying really desperately to find her we thought maybe someone had stolen her because there was just no sign of her at all and this amazing group in Maryland called lost and found pets of Anne Arundel County they reached out to me and they said you know you need to be putting up signs immediately we got connected with them and then eventually connected with a woman in the group named Donna who does a lot of rescue work as a volunteer she helped us hang signs all over the area it was about three weeks before we got our first sighting of her a really nice couple who had been driving down the road they looked out their window and they see standing in the woods so we walked into the woods and sure enough she was standing back there probably about 50 feet away from me but she was just in this like panic mode and she saw people and she ran she just kept running running and we got several calls that night from people who saw her but she never stayed in one place long enough for us to catch up to her I've been told that when a dog is in survival mode Primal instincts get triggered and dogs in survival mode are focused on food shelter and avoiding humans she went further into the woods where she felt safe and she wasn't near strangers every night my husband would go out and drive around the area just looking for any sign of her Mark said she's still out there and she's waiting for us to find her I reached back out to Donna with the rescue group and I just said we don't know what to do and that's when she really got involved and started helping us set up feeding stations traps even more signs and just doing everything we could to locate her we probably hung around 150 signs unfortunately some of them would get taken down by businesses or Highway Patrol we were out every single weekend putting up new signs refreshing signs 7 A.M I am in my car and I'm about to go check one of the food stations that we left out for Leia two days before New Year's Eve she showed up in a set of woods about four miles away this amazing generous human named Amanda she was in her office working she looked out her window and she said why is there a dog standing on the edge of the woods and she went out and drove around the area and found one of our signs and contacted us and that's how we found out where she was hiding totally different area than where she's been seen originally we set up a track we set up a food station we set up cameras these were all loaned To Us by Donna free of charge she's just an angel Donna brought out what's called the Missy trap took about two and a half hours to put together it's a six foot by 12 foot pen built by an engineer who Donna had helped before so this man built this giant Missy Trot for her with a laser um like a laser trip when the dog would go past the laser it would make the door shut and lock we had to get her to to go into the pan far enough to trip the laser and make the door closed we got her on camera but she wasn't going all the way in the pen where she could get trapped it was about a five square mile section of woods it was just really horrifying to think that we're responsible for this dog and her happiness and her well-being and because of a fluke accident now she's lost and we can't fix it we would sit up at night aware that it was so cold outside and just think of her huddled up somewhere alone scared cold not really able to go to sleep we accidentally did try out a few animals we trap possum a couple of different times I think the same possum twice he was very persistent so had to go out and Shake him out and go on buddy this wasn't for you we knew she was coming back to that area we got her on camera just about every day she would eat some of the food we had left out but she wasn't going all the way in the pen took us about two weeks of slowly getting her acclimated to the presence of that trap in her area and then feeling comfortable enough to go inside and follow the trail of food to the back and finally Donna says we got her you've got to go out there and it makes me start to cry now because we really thought we were never gonna get her back it was such an exciting moment to go out and walk down into those woods and have her see me and know who I was it's okay it's okay it's Mommy I know oh I know I hear you I hear you hey baby do you remember me he sat down and she sniffed and licked my hands and then she whined and pawed at the door she was like take me home now hi friends oh my gosh look at this baby she was very anxious it's slowly improving yeah the crazy thing was that my husband had been transferred for a new job and so he'd had to move I stayed in Maryland to keep looking for her I was calling him I'm like we got her and he facetimed her and talked to her say hi to Papa I have no idea how she survived I'm not sure what she ate she's definitely been more reactive since we got her back okay open the door to open the door more anxious more nervous about walking through doorways it's all right it's okay she had lost a third of her body weight but she's doing really well now she's a lot snugglier than before she's more likely to come and sit next to you on the couch foreign she used to always sleep at the foot of the bed and now she wants to be right up next to us snuggled up and close since getting her back I just look at her and my heart my heart feels tight what it just makes me that much more determined to keep her safe sure she has a wonderful life for as long as we're blessed to have her

Channel: GeoBeats Animals

Views: 968,424

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Id: 7EYHBA6jbUI

Length: 7min 48sec (468 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 27 2023