Lost Dog Was Too Defeated To Walk, So Her Rescuers Got Creative
A woman was hiking around Mt. Glorious National Park in Australia with her dad and her husband when, from a distance, they spotted an animal struggling in deep water. At first they assumed it was a kangaroo or a platypus - but what they found was a lost dog.
"We approached cautiously, not knowing whether this was a domesticated or wild dog," the woman wrote in a post on Imgur. "Either way, we couldn't leave it there in the freezing water. It was completely exhausted from its attempts to struggle out of the deep section it had fallen into, and there's no way it would've survived the night."
The trio was able to pull the dog out of the water using a rope, and she quickly ran away from them and began wandering through the thick brush.
"We figured if she'd been someone's pet, there was a chance she had been dumped or lost," the woman wrote. "Even though she wasn't interested in coming to us, we knew again that we couldn't leave her there."
As the dog ran away, the people followed her and found the little home she'd made for herself, which even included a tunnel she'd dug leading down to the water.
Assuming she was abandoned or lost, the family decided they had to try to rescue her. They nicknamed her Miss Piggy, because despite her time spent alone in the wild, she was still pretty chubby.
"We created a makeshift harness with non-slip knots, and tried to coax Miss Piggy to slowly climb through the scrub and loose rocks with us," the woman wrote. "She (predictably) wasn't overly keen on that, so we set about carrying/nudging her along - one person leading her and another pushing/carrying her from behind."
Miss Piggy was still very unsure of her rescuers, and at one point tried to make a run for it. After that failed, she was so tired and defeated that eventually she lay back down, unable to walk anymore.
The rescuers decided to just sit with her for a little while to try and gain her trust, and slowly she began to warm up to them. At one point she even moved in closer for pets and cuddles.
The family knew that Miss Piggy wasn't going to be able to walk back to their car with them - so they found a way to carry her.
Miss Piggy was, predictably, very heavy, and the two men struggled at first to lift her ...
... and Miss Piggy definitely did not believe in their abilities.
In a moment of creative genius, they found a large stick and looped it through the bag in order to carry her more effectively ...
... and it totally worked.
The family made it back up to the road, and brought Miss Piggy back to their car.
She still seemed a little apprehensive of the whole rescue mission ...
... but as soon as she was in the family's car, she seemed to know she was finally safe.
"Safely in the back of the car and down the windy mountain road, Miss Piggy was all smiles," the woman wrote.
When they arrived back home, Miss Piggy's personality had completely changed. She was no longer the scared, timid dog they had met in the national park. "During the trip home she seemed to relax a lot more," the woman wrote. "When we opened the back of the car, we were greeted with a different dog - the little tail was going a mile a minute."
Now that Miss Piggy was safe and rescued, the family set about the task of figuring out whom she belonged to. The woman posted on a Facebook page for lost dogs - and within 30 minutes, found the lost dog's dad.
Miss Piggy's real name turned out to be Elly-Bobby, and she'd gone missing on June 30th, almost a month before she was found. "Bobby's dad had mounted massive Facebook and poster campaigns to find her, and had been searching for hours every evening since she went missing, never giving up hope that he'd find her," the woman wrote.
Finally, after so long apart, Elly-Bobby and her dad were reunited.
"She was overwhelmed with joy to see him - such a beautiful thing," the woman wrote.
After almost a month living on her own, Elly-Bobby is finally safe and home again.
To adopt a pet of your own, check out Adopt-a-Pet.com to get started.