Dog Refuses To Budge From His Best Friend's Side

Len Baxley chokes up when he talks about the two dogs he saw on the outskirts of Dallas, Texas.

The black dog with the dead white dogLen Baxley

"I own a gun range on Wolf Springs Road in the southern part of Dallas county, down here near the river bottoms," Baxley told The Dodo. "And I've seen these two dogs - a black one and a white one - running up and down the road, playing with each other for the last several days."

Baxley says that on his way to work Monday morning, around 9 a.m., he saw the pair frolicking as usual. He didn't know if the the dogs had an owner, but there wasn't one in sight.

Around 2 p.m. Baxley left his gun range. He drove up the road, looked to the right and was stunned:

The white dog was dead.

And the black dog was sitting by his side.

The white dog was likely hit by a car "speeding ass" down the road, theorizes Baxley: "They were both about 7 or 8 feet off a road. I didn't know what exactly to do. But I didn't want anything bad to happen to the black dog."

Baxley realized he somehow needed to get the black dog to come with him, into his car. But no matter how much Baxley coaxed him, the animal wouldn't follow.

"I realized the problem was that he wasn't going to leave his buddy," says Baxley. He called some friends who had experience with rescuing animals, and they advised him to carefully put the white dog's body in the van - to encourage the black dog to jump in.

So Baxley did just that.

But the black dog still wouldn't get in the van.

Len Baxley

Meanwhile, the night was advancing. Baxley said that if he couldn't persuade the black dog into his van, he at the very least needed to get him off the side of the main road.

So he began to back up his van - the white dog's body still in it - with the side door open. Baxley's goal was to inch the van slowly onto his gated range property, so the black dog would be protected for the night from speeding cars.

"It was incredible," says Baxley. The black dog circled the van over and over again as Baxley backed the vehicle up: "At least 30 times," says Baxley. "He didn't follow me. He circled. Again and again. And then when I got back to my gate I stopped the car. And the dog just sat in front of the open side door."

"It was like he was guarding it," Baxley adds.

"I took a photo of it because it was really something."

Len Baxley

Again, Baxley tried to entice the dog to get into the van. "He went halfway in, but not all the way. "I must have fed him everything ... and then some."

The black dog being coaxed into the van with food; white dog's dead body is in the van.Len Baxley

By this time, says Baxley, his van was 150 yards off the main thoroughfare. "I was sure the black dog wasn't going to get run over at this point. But I also know he won't leave the white dog no matter what. I figured I'd take the white dog's body out of the van, and since the black dog wouldn't leave his side, I'd let them spend the night out there and I'd come back and get him in the morning."

But then, Baxley heard the sound of coyotes. He knew that the black dog might not survive the evening: the animal had a limp on his back leg, possibly from the same accident that killed his friend.

Len Baxley

It was now 9:30 p.m. Baxley had been trying to save the black dog for nearly 8 hours.

He called Marina Tarashevska, the tireless founder of the rescue group Dallas Dogrrr, to help him.

She came right out, says Baxley. "And you know, she had the magic touch! It took me 7 hours to get that black dog to finally let me pet him. But Marina drives up, opens up her car door and they are like best friends!"

Baxley says together, they got the black dog in a crate and he took him into his own home.

Len Baxley

Len Baxley

But Baxley can't keep him forever, he says, so he's hoping someone will adopt him. "He is a great dog. I'm sitting here rubbing him now," Baxley says on the phone from his home in Ovilla. "We better find this buddy a home soon because we are bonding. He licked my face. He fell asleep on my foot. I don't want him to get too attached and then be ripped away from me."

Len Baxley

Baxley estimates the black dog - whom he doesn't want to name because he wants the next family to have the opportunity - is a 10- or 12-month-old lab mix and weighs about 50 pounds.

"He's just great," Baxley adds for the second time.

Even though the black dog is now safe, the past few days continue to wear on Baxley's mind: "Just seeing the black dog sitting there ... And I feel bad that I passed the two of them for several days and thought maybe that they belonged to someone down here, although it's more likely someone probably just kicked them out of their home."

The white dog was a male, says Baxley. He buried the animal just a few hours before the interview with The Dodo. "Someone suggested to me that they think, in fact, the two were brothers."

If you want to adopt "Black Dog" please reach Dallas Doggrrr on its website or Facebook page.