There is a dog rescue in Colorado, for the most misunderstood breed of dog, the pit bull. The owner of the rescue is Tanya Boyer and her kids Serina, Ashley, Ron, and Rylee. An average day at the rescue consists of receiving calls of pit bulls wandering in the street, stuck in abandoned homes, and even calls of pit bulls known to be being abused. Shortly after receiving calls, a team of 2-3 people find the location of the pit bull(s) and attempts to rescue it, and then brings it back to the Billibous Rescue Center to be well cared for. Other than receiving calls, and rescuing pit bulls, a day consist of grooming, bathing, feeding, playing with the dogs, and cleaning. Now I am going to tell you about a very nerve-wracking rescue that the rescue employees achieved, but from the perspective of Ashley.
Hello everyone, I'm Ashley and here's a story of a nerve-wracking rescue. We got to work that day, February 4th, it was a slow morning, with only two calls by nine in the morning, when we have usually received at least five. Since it was slow we all took a kennel and deep cleaned it. In order to clean the kennels, the dogs must be outside, just as we were getting the last dog, the 97th one, we got a phone call. It was about a female pit bull who looked like she just got done nursing puppies that showed up to a door whimpering, and whining. The caller, whose name was Margaret, did not know where the dog could have come from because she just moved to Colorado and had only been living in that house for a week. While on the phone, Margaret found the dog's name, Cookie, she said that the dog responded really well to that name, so we could tell she had been with a family. Maybe she got dumped when her owner could tell she was about to have puppies? Serina and I drove to the location of Cookie and talked to Margaret. After locating Cookie we looped a rope around her hoping that she would walk us to where her puppies were hidden, and she did just that. She walked us to an old burned down store, and as we got closer, we could hear little tiny puppy whines, but we could not locate where exactly her puppies were.
I called Rylee, "What should we do? we have located a mother, and we can hear her puppies but cannot find them"
Rylee replied, "If she's not scared then you can remove the rope and see if she will locate her babies" So we unlooped her.
"She found them!" We kept Rylee on the phone in case we needed help, but as soon as Cookie located her puppies we crawled through the disaster of wood, and glass. When we finally reached Cookie we saw why she couldn't get to her puppies and was at Margaret's door, there was a broken board slanted against the wall, making it impossible for Cookie to feed her puppies or be near them.
"She is so happy to see her puppies, we have moved the board that barricaded the puppies, but there are nine puppies who need desperate help, so could you come here as soon as possible to get these puppies and Cookie out of this mess?"
"Yes, I will be there in the next five minutes, Start picking up the puppies, but keep an eye on Cookie as removing her puppies may scare her."
We started to remove the puppies, when suddenly Cookie jolted past us and through the broken window heading directly towards a busy highway. "Call the center, see if Ron is available to come help we need to stop Cookie!" I explained while I ran to the truck, grabbed the rope, and a bag of treats, and started calling Cookie, but it was obvious that we lost her trust she was not going to come near us, again. I called Ron and told him to go into the laundry-mat parking lot across the highway and attempt to get across, to hopefully scare Cookie back towards us. As soon as we saw Ron we were alert watching Cookie, Ron ran across the highway but not aggressively and Cookie started running towards us, we shook the treats, yelled her name, and she curved and started to run the other way. Serina, Ron, and I tried to circle her so shed stay where she was, and it actually worked, she stopped, and we looped the rope around her. We still had to get her puppies so we ran to the torn down building where they were, crawled through the mess, I started handing Ron the puppies who then took them to the truck and kenneled them.
Finally, we got the ninth puppy into the truck, and we headed back towards the rescue. On our way, we noticed there was a traffic jam, but whatever was causing it was too far ahead to be visible to us. We started to see people get out of their vehicles, and we knew it was big problem, was it a dead dog, a lost one, or a car accident? But after realizing that it was not a car accident and it was most likely some animal, Serina got into Ron's vehicle, and Ron went to investigate the cause of the traffic jam we were in. All of a sudden, Ron was running back towards us.
"There is a male Pitbull dragging his hind legs, circling the middle of the road! There's no way to get past it, he looks as if he may have gotten hit! Ashley, call Rylee tell him we need him, because we can't leave our vehicles unattended." I called Rylee, and he was there in a matter of three minutes and located us.
"We need an extra-long loop, he seems to be aggressive, approach him slowly, and let him sniff you before getting too close" Ron explained.
We were the only rescue who took Pit bulls in Colorado, and we knew we had to do something, even with the ten dogs in our truck. Rylee parked in the resting area and soon became visible to us, we directed him to exactly where it was, and Rylee walked through hundreds of vehicles holding very un-patient people, and finally reached the Pitbull. He got close enough and looped the rope around the dog so he couldn't snap at anyone, and so we could get him into Rylee's truck, but he was not cooperative, it was very difficult to get him to even move a little bit. Rylee called me
"I need help, send Ron and a kennel up here to help me, because this dog is not cooperating!" Ron ran to him.
"We need to get him to move, he'll circle a little bit but will not fully walk, so we need to pick up his rear end, and move him to the side so all these vehicles can leave!" Rylee exclaimed. It was obvious that the dog had been hit by a car and was traumatized, and would not leave the road, because of the pain he was in. Ron approached the dog from behind while Rylee was occupying him with treats. Rylee tugged on the leash a little bit to get the dog to focus forward and Ron lifted the dog up, together they walked the dog to the kennel, and the cars started to proceed forward. As we were getting the dog's kennel to the edge of the highway, a 4x4 truck came flying by striking the side of Ron's truck, we ran to his truck, the truck with the ten other dogs in it!....