When Hope For Paws, a non-profit animal rescue group based in Los Angeles, California, heard about a homeless dog wandering outside of an elementary school, they knew they had to do something.
What they hoped would be an easy rescue turned out to be a quite difficult one.
Rescue Mission
As soon as the rescuers managed to find her, they tried to gently approach her, but when they noticed that this little Husky didn’t trust humans, they had to think of a different way.
The rescuers decided to put some food in the middle of dog graspers, hoping to lure the little pup close enough so that they could put the graspers around her neck.
Luckily, they managed to do just that.
Unfortunately, the pup got scared and tried fighting back, but eventually, she calmed down.
Before putting her inside a crate and bringing her back to the shelter, her rescuers decided to give her some pets and cuddles, showing her that there was nothing to be afraid of and that they were there to help.
At The Shelter
As soon as they arrived at the shelter, they decided to give her a nice, warm bath, but the scared pup wasn’t so happy about it.
Being so terrified of being touched, she decided to hide in the corner and block out the world around her.
“In that moment, she just wanted to melt into that corner and not exist at all. That dog wants to be invisible because she needed to be invisible to survive,” said Farren Mahone.
Since this pup spent so much time all alone, she wasn’t sure why, all of a sudden, all of these hoomans were engaging with her in such a positive way.
Being so heartbroken when seeing her behavior, the shelter staff was determined to show this scared little pup what doggo-hooman love was all about.
Training Camp
After her rescue, the pup, now named Lilac, went through months of training with Farren in order to learn that the human world wasn’t as scary as she thought.
About two months into working with her, a friend of mine had mentioned that she wanted a dog. And I said ‘Well, I’ve got this dog named Lilac…’
Farren’s friend, Tanja, came over in order to meet Lilac, and when the two met, it was love at first sight.
We go outside, Tanja kneels down and Lilac looks at her and then touches Tanja on the back of her arm with her nose. Lilac had never touched somebody before. And when she touched Tanja, that was Lilac saying, ‘I’m ready, I’m ready for this relationship. This is my person’.
New Life
Tanja knew that she had to treat Lilac as somebody who had moved on from her trauma, not as somebody who was being defined by it.
And, because of that, they created such an unbreakable bond full of love, adoration, and fun, which I know will last forever.
