Charlie's Angels Animal Rescue: A lost puppy finds its way home...

When the call came in to the volunteers with Charlie’s Angels Animal Rescue (CAAR), it wasn’t all that unusual. Like so many of the calls the organization receives, this was a call for help. Someone had found six puppies at the Transylvania County Land fill. For the past two years, one of the land fill employees had been trying to gain the trust of an adult female dog who had made the land fill her home. He fed her and bought her a dog house to provide her with better shelter, but he could never gain enough trust that she would come to him. But when he found the dog’s six new born puppies in a storm drain, he knew he had to take action to protect the fragile puppies and get them into a safe place. Animal Control was called in to “trap” the mother dog, then along with her six puppies, the brood was transported to the animal shelter where they were assessed. The mother dog and all six puppies, who were still so young their eyes were not yet opened, were then turned over to the CAAR volunteer who had stepped forward to foster the entire family.

In the days that followed, the mother dog, now dubbed Penny, and her six puppies settled into their temporary foster home. Within a week, CAAR had coordinated a rescue solution for all six puppies with WAGS, ananimal rescue group in Pennsylvania who works closely with CAAR and has rescued dozens of dogs from this area.

This could easily be the happy ending and logged as another success story for CAAR, but there was more to come and no one could anticipate the call that came next. On Friday, April 8 in the midst of preparing for CAAR’s recent yard sale, one of the Animal Control Officers (ACO) notified CAAR that another puppy had been found at the land fill and asked if someone come and get it at the shelter. When CAAR arrived to pick up the puppy, it quickly became apparent to everyone involved that this puppy was from the same litter that had been rescued a full three weeks earlier. “We have no idea how this new born puppy managed to survive all that time at the land fill. When we found his litter mates, their eyes were still closed and even now they are still nursing” says Divinity Morgan, CAAR volunteer. But by some miracle, the seventh puppy appeared to be thriving and healthy and when he was reunited with his mother and litter mates, it was a sweet home coming. When they are fully weaned and ready to travel, he will join his six siblings on their journey to Pennsylvania where they will be adopted into forever homes.

As for Penny, the mother dog, the rest of the story ends equally well for her. The land fill employee who has been her guardian angel for the past two years has volunteered to continue looking after Penny, making sure she is safe, fed, and sheltered. CAAR will make sure that Penny is spayed, and vaccinated, then when she is healthy and healed, she will continue the rest of her life with the man who is surely her best friend. There is a poem that goes “Find a penny and pick it up...then all the day you’ll have good luck”. For Penny and her six, make that seven, puppies, that was certainly the case.

Penny when she first came to the shelter.