Earlier this month, a woman driving home along an ATV trail in the backwoods of eastern Kentucky stopped short when she spotted two tiny puppies peeking out from the top of a mountain bank.
All of a sudden, the little dogs came running toward her, with
their siblings following closely behind.
The woman managed to catch the two bravest puppies, but couldn’t get a hold of the other eight. She hurried home and posted on Facebook, asking if anyone could help. She quickly heard from Lexis Noelle, a volunteer dog rescuer and animal advocate, who headed straight to the area with her fiancé, Jon.
Noelle and her fiancé held their breath as they searched the woods.
“I was truly so worried that we wouldn’t be able to find them, but I was not going to give up,” Noelle told The Dodo. “We heard something in the leaves and immediately stopped walking, and all of a sudden, [two] little puppies started running down the mountain bank to our left. Once they started running, the rest started following.”
The rescuers gathered all of the puppies in their arms and walked a mile back to their car. They could tell the dogs needed serious help, as they were all underweight, covered in fleas and suffering from infections. Despite their sickness, the pups were extremely affectionate, gratefully showering their rescuers with love.
Noelle took the puppies to her best friend and rescue partner Haylee Lay’s home, where they got all of the dogs in the bathtub.
“[We] spent about 30 minutes [bathing] each puppy,” Noelle said. “We also dewormed them. It took us till midnight to finish.”
Noelle then got in touch with her rescue network and found the puppies a place to land at Safe Hands Rescue, a Minnesota-based shelter with a rehabilitation outpost in Kentucky. The puppies will receive further veterinary care through Safe Hands before moving to Minnesota to continue their adoption process.
Noelle and Lay are so glad to see these puppies getting the second chance they deserve, and they appreciate all the hardworking rescuers who continuously show up for needy dogs in rural Kentucky.
“We both think it’s extremely important to bring situations like this to light,” Noelle said. “We are extremely grateful for the rescues that choose to partner with us and help pull dogs from our location.”
