A Midnight Visitor

Thursday night was a bit of a strange one for us. Me and Conor went to the cinema to a late showing and on our way back from Lincoln about midnight we had an unusual find. We have to pass Lincolnshire Rescue Kennels which is about 3 miles from home, about 100 meters passed the kennels we had to swerve to miss hitting something. We quickly realised it was a dog. We turned around and then pulled over and Conor got out to check. After a minute or two of whistling and calling he came out of the field carrying a Rottweiler.  'It' turned out to be a 'she' and she was only around 6 months old (if that). We assumed she must have got out from the kennels so we put her on our lap and drove her back there. Being midnight there was nobody around and us driving around didn't get anyones attention so we ended up having to take the puppy back home with us.

When we got home we let her out with Brian but she had clearly not seen other dogs before as she was very nervous of him and a bit snappy. After some deliberation what to do we decided it might be best if she slept in the van for the night as the Mali's might not take to a snappy visitor. We put her in the van and then let the others out so they could sniff her in the van but with her safely in a kennel. They didn't seem too bothered about her although Megan did have a little grumble at first but soon got over it.

Not happy with leaving her in the van for the night we opted to set up a crate in our room for her and she could sleep indoors. We also decided to let the others meet her properly too. Heidi was absolutely brilliant with her, she stood perfectly still and let the puppy (who we had named Xou (pronounced You)) sniff her and when Xou snapped Heidi did nothing at all, just waited for her to come back to her. After a very short time Heidi had her playing with her and running around. Megan and Kody wanted to sniff her and she pretty quickly got used to them all. (The name Xou came as Conor had said to her 'C'mon you' and she came!)

We gave her some food and a collar and then put her to bed, she didn't settle in the crate for a while and even managed to escape the metal crate but by about 3.30am she finally went to sleep. The next morning she was up at 7.30 and she played in the garden with them all, had her breakfast and helped herself to toys and bones and then I called the rescue centre who said she wasn't from there but had likely to have been dumped outside as they had already had about 4 this year. The lady then said she would come to collect Xou that morning (although I had to phone the council first).

(Heidi & 'Xou')

The lady from the rescue centre came for Xou at about 10am and scanned her and she wasn't microchipped. She did say though that she wouldn't be difficult to re home if nobody claimed her as she is a puppy and people always want puppies.

She was lucky that it was us driving along the road that night as i'm sure not everyone would have stopped and then taken her in for the night. She was a lovely puppy although she had clearly had no training at all and had we not already got 4 dogs we would have almost certainly have kept her if her owner hadn't appeared. I said i'd ring the kennels tomorrow to check if she had been claimed. Hopefully she has although i'm sure she will end up with a nice home whatever happens. It is so sad to think that people just abandon their dogs when they can't or don't want to look after them any more.