While we may often view dog rescuers as volunteers who work at a shelter, it can truly fall into anyone’s lap! For one police officer, that moment literally dropped into his lap in a way that he never expected. Officer Kareem Garibaldi from the Lakeland Police Department showed the type of person he was when a dog was in need.
Officer Garibaldi was working the early shift one morning when the run-in happened.
The early shift isn’t known for a ton of action. It’s usually pretty calm and quiet, especially on a Saturday morning. When Officer Garibaldi was driving around early that Saturday morning, however, he nearly ran into a small dog. The sunrise shift turned out to be more exciting than he expected!
He decided to get out of the car and take a look at the small dog.
It was a pit-boxer mix and it was clearly very young. Too young to be anywhere by itself. From what he could see, it was around 8-10 weeks old, making this pup a near newborn and it was just out by itself on the roads.
The next step was to see if this pup was lost or abandoned.
As far as he could see, the puppy didn’t have a way to identify it or its owners. It didn’t have a collar or markings, so Officer Garibaldi took matters into his own hands. He took the pup with him and drove into the neighborhood where he found the dog in the first place.
He started driving the neighborhood and posting pictures on social media.
He hoped that he would find people looking for the dog or that he would get a hit on social media. For the entire next day, he looked for anyone who could give him some information on the dog. Unfortunately, he didn’t get anything and was forced to head back to the station.
Since he didn’t have any information and his shift was over, he had to make a decision.
Instead of just dropping the dog off at a local shelter or keeping her in the LPD building alone, he took matters into his own hands. He decided that he was going to stay with her as long as he could. After his third day in a row of working 12-hour shifts, he finally went to the SPCA Florida Medical Center.
He sat with the dog for the entire night, waiting for results!
“I could not resist taking this picture when I walked into the clinic at SPCA Florida this morning. Officer Kareen totally went out of his way after working all night to make sure this puppy was safe and sound. Thank you so much for all you do!! You are such an inspiration.”
His hard work paid off, too! The pup was adopted that day by a dispatcher and now goes by the name Hope. It seems to be quite the appropriate name!
“It clearly was a selfless thing to do. He wasn’t thinking about getting home to sleep. He was thinking about what he could do to help this puppy survive. He actually woke up at one point just to see if she was OK, then he went back to sleep.”
That’s a devoted Officer who cares about the little guys!
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
