When Old Lady disappeared into the woods, her caretaker, Azure Davis, was worried that she would never see the sweet dog again.
Old Lady, a 10-year-old Saint Bernard, wandered off into the frigid Minnesota wilderness and she had been gone for an excruciatingly long 17 days. The poor thing was groomed, so she didn’t have a thick double coat to protect her from the below-freezing temperatures.
Davis, who is also the owner of Ruff Start Rescue, hadn’t known the old girl for very long but she was praying and hoping that the Saint Bernard was tougher than she looked – despite her timid personality.
Old Lady was one of 400 dogs that had been rescued from a puppy mill earlier in the year.
Ruff Start Rescue had found a foster home from the 10-year-old dog, but before she was able to make it to her new home – things sadly took a turn for the worse for the dog.
“The foster picked Old Lady up and brought her to her home,” Davis told The Dodo. “As soon as the foster got her out of the car on her leash, Old Lady got spooked from the crunching ice sound and took off dragging the foster with her partway down the icy driveway.”
Davis quickly called The Retrievers, a volunteer rescue team that helps find lost dogs, to have them assist in finding Old Lady. Search teams would go out looking for her, but they always came back without any good news. However, they had heard about sightings of her, which gave them hope that she was still okay.
Day after day, time would go by without any sign of Old Lady. Davis knew she must have been hiding somewhere, too fearful to come out.
“This is one strong and quick dog,” Davis posted on Facebook, “especially for her senior age.”
Over two weeks passed without any sight of Old Lady and to make matters worse – the temperatures dropped to a bone-chilling 10 degrees below zero. Davis’ heart sank, knowing that it would be nearly impossible for the dog to survive in such weather.
Finally – after 17 long, nail-biting days – Davis’ phone rang with the news she had been hoping and praying for.
A man and his two grandsons had been walking in the woods when they spotted Old Lady ‘tied up’ in the trees. The leash that Old Lady still had attached to her neck had become tangled on a branch.
“A branch got stuck to her leash and then, between the leash and branch, she got herself wound up in the trees and stuck,” Davis wrote. “Thank goodness! It’s the only way we would have gotten her.”
Davis and her partner, Julie Lessard, rushed over to the area where Old Lady had been spotted and approached her with care and caution. The dog was visibly shivering due to the cold and they were able to cut her free from the tree.
It was a true miracle that she was alive.
“As soon as we got her into my car and shut the door, I could breathe,” Davis said. “It was over. She was safe. It was such a sense of relief — we were laughing, crying, high-fiving. It was a miracle.”
“I think her willpower to live stems from living in a barn her entire 10 years of her life and having to be strong,” Davis went on to say.
After her harrowing ordeal in the woods – it seemed as if Old Lady was ready to relax, settle down, and let some love into her life.
“One of the women who helped search for Old Lady … actually fell in love with her while searching for her from her photo,” Davis said. “She has Saint Bernard experience and she has a lot of shy/timid dog experience so it was a perfect match.”
Just two days after being rescued from the snowy woodlands, Old Lady was adopted into her new forever home – and they seemed to fall in love with each other immediately.
Old Lady is now safe, happy, and loved – she also wears a harness and two leashes whenever she goes out.
We hope Old Lady and her new mom have many loving years together and we couldn’t be more grateful for this happy ending!
Read Davis’ full Facebook post below.
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Today was a good day. Here is the rescue of "Old Lady" the missing St.Bernard that took place today when we received a…
Posted by Ruff Start Rescue onMonday, January 21, 2019
