Heidi

"Heidi"

1992/1994 to Feb, 2007
Rest in peace sweet girl

Pictures

Heidi was one of our first rescue dogs when we started doing rescue in 1996 and was by far the most difficult one. She had been dumped as a youngster in some woods by a WalMart and lived there on her own for several years before we got her, so it's hard to say how old she was although we estimate she was between 2-4 yrs old. She had never had any human contact whatsoever, had several litters of puppies, and was occasionally left food by caring people who knew about her.

Several times the animal control officer had tried to shoot her with a tranquilizer gun, but each time she would just run deeper into the woods and confirmed her belief that people were bad news.

Then one day after we had first started in rescue, I received a phone call from an all-breed rescue person who asked if we could help catch her. So we went down there, armed with a handful of tranquilizers, a crate, and some long leashes - we put the pills in a piece of chicken and spent the afternoon watching her with a set of binoculars. Finally after several hours, the tranquilizers started taking effect and my husband crept up on his hands and knees pushing the crate in front of him so she wouldn't see him, while the others and I crept up on her from behind, and when we were close enough to her we pushed her into the crate.

We took her home and left her in the crate to sleep off the tranquilizers and by morning she was fully awake. "Okay, now what" my husband asked...."we have to take her out of there sometime". Luckily, we had put a couple of long leashes her and draped them outside of the crate the night before so that when we did take her out we had something to grab onto in case she tried to run away or attack us, which we assumed she would. She did neither surprisingly enough.....she walked out of the crate just as nice as can be, let me pet the top of her head, and then we proceeded to give her several baths to get all the fleas, ticks, and smell off of her. Remember, this is a dog who had never in her life been touched by a person! For the next several weeks, I had to hand feed her human food as she had never eaten (and would not eat) dog food, only human junk food, so each night I would cook her some chicken and rice and let her eat it right next to me while I petted her. I started mixing in canned food and some dry food and eventually she got the hang of it. She was then spayed, had a horrible case of heartworms (and every other type of worm there is) that we treated her for, plus a myriad of skin problems that required special antibiotics and shampoos several times a week.

We eventually decided to keep her ourselves considering her temperament was not one we could place with anybody else and after all that we had gone through with her I couldn't bear to put her to sleep. That's okay though....we love her and she loves us (and only us), she's an excellent house dog, is extremely intelligent and obedient, loves to go out to the pasture and chase cows, and would protect us with her life. Not too bad for a former 'wild' dog!

Sadly, Heidi passed away of natural causes in February, 2007.......we estimate she was between 13-15 yrs old and once rescued lived a wonderful, happy, healthy, and full life. She was one of the matriarchs of the household who greeted every new comer and made it clear to all new dogs that she was the boss around here. Heidi is greatly missed by all and was one very special, grand lady........I'm glad we had the opportunity to have her in our lives for the time we did, and know that she's out there somewhere still bossing everyone around :-)