Volunteer Alan Borland's daily walk with Nala, a pitbull-lab mix from the Humane Society of Redmond, took a strange turn early this month. The usually well-behaved Nala began looking south and pulling — hard.
"This is the first time she ever refused to stop pulling," says Borland, 55, a retired policeman. " I finally gave in and let her pull me into a ditch. It's a deep and brushy, about four feet deep and 15 feet across."
What they found at the bottom was a black and white ball of fur curled up, with baseball-sized balls of snow covering his feet. "I thought it was dead at first," says Borland, who immediately knew it was a dog. "As I bent down I saw it was breathing, but it didn't move."
Borland sought help from the Humane Society and its veterinary facility, just 200 yards away.
And then, an incredible realization.
The dog, a 10-year old blind and mostly deaf Cocker Spaniel, had been a resident of the shelter. The month before, a woman with a soft spot for disabled animals adopted him. Named Chadwick, he moved two miles from the shelter but wandered away and travelled for a week through miles of heavy snow back to the Humane Society.
"I was pretty surprised," says Chris Bauersfeld, the shelter's manager. "We knew that Chadwick was lost, but we never expected him to manage his way back here. I think he heard the other dogs barking and his bearings took him this way."
Did Nala, a shelter resident since April, recognize the scent of her former shelter neighbor?
"Several dogs walked by that morning on their morning walk and didn't alert to him at all," says Bauersfeld. "On a daily basis, these dogs do something that makes me just stand in awe."
Once Chadwick was rehydrated and warmed up, his distraught owner — searching for him since he disappeared seven days before — picked the pup up. Bauersfeld does not know how Chadwick escaped from his new home.
Nala, however, still needs a home. Great with humans, she doesn't get along with many other dogs. "Alot of other people have offered to adopt her," says Bauersfeld, "we haven't found the right situation for her."
When Freekibble.com heard the story they were so inspired by Nala's rescue they jumped in to donate 10,000 meals of Halo Spot's Stew to the Redmond Humane Society.
"We just happen to live in a neighboring town, and when we heard of Nala rescuing this brave but scared little Cocker Spaniel, we wanted to help out with a large donation of good food in Nala's honor," says Freekibble's Kelly Ausland. "She saved her friend, she's a hero!
http://www.halopets.com/freekibble/donation8.php
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