Animal Rescue Stories - Because we need some happy endings

[Scratch This Nut]

With all of the shit that's been going on these past few days, we all need some brain bleach. I want to focus on something more positive. I want to hear about animals that were found in hellish circumstances and made it out and are living happily ever after. Share any animal rescue stories you have.

Might wanna binge on this too. https://www.thedodo.com/

 

[REGENDarySumanai]

My neighbor has been rescuing dogs for decades at least, and she has a great dane that was going to be shot and killed and took him in for herself. Said dog does not like men at all.

 

[The Shadow]

One of my dogs we got on his last day at the shelter. Another was rescued from a hoarding situation with hundreds of other dogs. Both are still with me, happy and healthy.

 

[Dolphin Lundgren]

A zoo in Santa Ana took in an injured Bald Eagle that was shot by hunters. They fixed the wing and housed it until it regained its strength and released it.

 

[Nekromantik]

My mother fosters dogs, trains them, gets them comfortable around people and other animals, and ready for forever homes. One of the dogs she adopted herself was abandoned because she was diagnosed with diabetes. The owners didn't have time to give the shots everyday. Moms retied so she has all day to be with the dogs caring for them.

We rescued our rabbit from my husbands step mother. Who thought a rabbit would be fine in an outdoor hutch with a wire mesh floor, no grass, no chew toys , no den to hide in, alone, in the Texas summer heat. She didn't want to pay vet bills.

 

[Frogasm]

i kept an old chicken once that one of my clients couldn't take with her to live in a homeless shelter. The chicken was like nine years old and had had a partial wing amputation when she was younger so one of its wings was small. I have a suspicion that my clients abusive husband (who she was leaving when i got the chicken) was the one that hurt its wing in the first place and he'd been hitting his wife too, so im glad the chicken got out of that guy's house.

I had a big cage in my place for the chicken to sleep in but she was a pretty chill hen that liked to walk in my place and sit on my coffee table. I fed her mostly chicken food you can buy at a store but she also liked basically all of my leftovers. I had her for about a year before she died in her sleep.

turns out that chickens can be really affectionate and she was smarter than I expected. the downside is that you do have to clean the house a lot more deeply and frequently if you let the chicken inside because of germs.

 

[HeraldofNurgle]

A few years back there was a major storm that was bad enough that there was a lot of flooding. After the rains I went out for a walk and heard a little kitten meowing. I followed it cause I'm hardwired to follow kitten noises, and I found a kitten in a deep ditch. It was full of mud and water and this poor kitten was trapped and couldn't climb back out. This was around October, so it was very cold and she looked super thin. So, I took her home with me.

At first I thought she might be a brown/grey kitten, but a bath revealed that she was actually white. I dunno how long she was trapped in there or where she came from. She was old enough to eat tinned cat food and had all her kitten teeth, so I kept her. She was a really really awesome cat and slaughtered all the mice in the house. I still wonder from time to time how she ended up in a flooded ditch, but I was grateful to have her in my life for the time that I did. I hope that her mother and siblings made it out okay in the end.

Here's another story from back when I lived in the country. Where I lived was full of dairy farms and incredibly rural. We would always get major blizzards during the winter that would end up trapping us in the valley for weeks to months at a time. A really bad one hit back in 1993 and even though we prepared for it, it was still really severe.

Our neighbor who raised cattle told us he heard a little calf bawling out in the storm. That was weird to him cause all his calves were with their moms in the barn. So he went out in the blizzard to look.

Outside there was a bull calf wandering around, crying, so he picked up the calf and took him inside. He has no idea where the hell a random ass calf came from in a fucking blizzard. He asked the other farmers and all their calves were tagged and registered. So, he kept the calf and named him Blizzard.

I got a lot of rescue stories due to the nature of where I lived, being so close to animals. But here I chose the two that were most important to me.

 

[Ido]

My dog is a puppy mill rescue, we've had him a year but they guessed when we got him He was about 7-10 based on his gums. He acts like a puppy he gets so excited all time, he loves to play and his favorite toys (despite me spending around $40 for his actual toys) are socks, bras and his most favorite is potholders. He also loves sliding down the hallway.

It's really sad though, he only likes my mom and I and has actually gotten the name demon dog from friends and family because he doesn't know how to act so barks and tries to attack. He's gotten much better thanks to the water bottle, now he sits across the hall where people can see him (He used to hide behind one of chairs there before). You can tell he wants to be loved on when he's snuggled up across the floor, looking longengly at us, but he just doesn't know how to ask for it.

It's funny though, he's a midget Maltese so he's super tiny yet he thinks he's huge lol.

 

[KelpieSelkie]

Yeah, we need some positivity. I was about to go read the new thread posts but I'll share this first:

I volunteer at an animal shelter, and while we don't often recieve abused dogs, we do get ones with severe behavioral issues. One time there was a German Shepherd, a female senior who couldn't be placed in a home with other dogs, children, or cats. Everyone who saw her wanted her, but we couldn't adopt her out to anyone because of the stipulations. So, a lead staff member contacted a rescue I had never personally heard of to take her off our hands, and hopefully find her a home. They not only took her, but another dog we had that we couldn't get adopted out, and pretty soon us volunteers got an email that the German Shepherd had a home, and pictures showed that she looked very happy with an older lady by her side. I wish them a happy life together.

 

[Benine Bovine]

When i was a very young child we were in the mountains and noticed a sheep stuck on its back. If a sheep is stuck in such a way, it will die eventually; we just grabbed its legs and rolled it over so it could stand up. Went on with its merry way

 

[Kari Kamiya]

My aunt many years ago before she married found and rescued a kitten from a storm drain that she adopted and named Stormy. I believe it was in the local paper, I wanted to properly confirm since I don't remember the year, but I can't find anything online, so eh. I don't see my aunt too often, but she's always been a cat lover. I think the majority of the cats she ever owned were strays, but not many of them were fond of people, so I hardly ever got to see them.

Two of our cats are adopted. One was a stray and he wandered into our backyard one summer, and just hung around for a few days until Mom took pity on him (more like she said to herself "This cat's going to die on our back porch and I don't want that" and gave him food and water). We didn't have any issue with him since he was just a little sweetheart and didn't mind coming up to rub up on our legs, and the neighborhood loves him, one of the things he'd do before he got lazy was go down in the green field by our house and just watch or join in play with some of the kids. We thought he was a girl at first 'til the vet doing surgery on him noticed he was a neutered male, but he must've quickly forgiven us for putting him through the same surgery again lol. For years, though, he hated feet and would pounce on our bare feet any chance he got, making us believe whoever previously owned him kicked him as a kitten. He's fine with feet now.

The other was adopted from a no-kill shelter that had a location in the mall we go to. We have a habit of wandering into these places to just look at the animals, but we never thought about adopting since my one brother's not a fan of animals (mostly dogs), he can only tolerate our cats being in the same room as him for a time. But the one time we went in there and saw the cats, one had been given the temporary name "Bethany", same as our old lump cat, and we were like "Lol that's neat". Then she headbutted the glass expected to be petted and I was just like "SHE'S SO CUTE I WANT TO PET HER". We walked around the mall to think on it for a little bit, and we couldn't forget about her, so we went back and asked to see her, and we started adoption papers then and there.

Spoiler: Backstory in spoilers, post is long enough

We don't know where she came from or what her life was like prior to us adopting her. The best we got is she was picked up by one of the volunteers at the back of a Wal-Mart where she was wandering. The thing is, though, while she does go outside, she doesn't leave the yard and only stays outside for a few minutes. We believe she was actually dropped off there by someone who didn't want to deal with her because she's quite a needy little thing (probably spoiled by some old lady who ended up dying or being put in a home), she just has to be petted and cuddling up against something or someone, but she'll also get snippy if you pet her and coddle her for too long. For an eight-year-old, she's also the smallest of the three cats, but when we originally thought she was a munchkin, turns out she had been exposed to the Coronavirus in the past and one of the things it does is stunt growth. Coronavirus is devastating in cats, but when it's dormant it doesn't do anything--it only ever has like a 5% chance to activate, so she's healthy otherwise and gets a lot of exercise running around playing with her toys. God forbid it ends up ever activating, but if it does for whatever reason in the future, I'm hoping it'll be when she's already old and reached her life expectancy so it'll be quick.

Also, she and the other cat both hate the vet even though they're cooperative to get in the carrier. They're nice cats at home, but they get hissy and spitty at the vet's and have to be knocked out for further examinations in the back room. It's kinda funny tbh, but what can you do.

 

[Sperglord Dante]

My dog is a puppy mill rescue, we've had him a year but they guessed when we got him He was about 7-10 based on his gums. He acts like a puppy he gets so excited all time, he loves to play and his favorite toys (despite me spending around $40 for his actual toys) are socks, bras and his most favorite is potholders. He also loves sliding down the hallway.

It's really sad though, he only likes my mom and I and has actually gotten the name demon dog from friends and family because he doesn't know how to act so barks and tries to attack.

I've had a similar experience, my rescued dog is sweet as hell and super playful even though she's pretty old (she's pushing 11-12 years now), but socializing her was extremely hard. To this day she stills flips her shit at the garbage men.

 

[MerriedxReldnahc]

All my fur babies have been rescued, the two siblings we adopted from our local cat rescue center when they were super tiny. They had been found in a box somewhere with the rest of the litter and since these two were so attached to each other they wanted them adopted out together. They were considered special needs cats since they were so young and the boy (a Siamese) was terrified of everything. We did suspect we'd have our hands full when we adopted them- a man saw the Siamese and his only comment was "never again!"
They're 9 years old now, spoiled rotten, and the boy is still terrified of everything.
My other kitty was a stray that started to wander in our yard, I used to play with her but didn't feed her since I figured she belonged to someone. She started to get skinnier and skinnier before my family decided that she clearly wasn't in someone's care. We fed her some tuna one night and she stayed with us ever since. At some point we did put a collar on her with our information, and we ended up getting a weird phone call from someone who lives 10 or so blocks away from us. They didn't tell us her name and basically just said "You have our cat but you can keep her, we don't want her back. She hates us." Fuck those bitches cause she was the best damn cat ever. We had her and spoiled her fat ass until she passed away last month at the estimated age of 19.

We do some pretty impressive work at my local wildlife clinic (Well, I shouldn't say WE. I mostly clean up bird poop). Our veterinary surgeon is apparently one of the best wildlife vets in the state. Lots of opossums come in, one in particular was shot in the head with a BB gun several times and sustained brain damage, we couldn't release her but she was being trained as a wildlife ambassador. We've had lots of hawks and owls- those are pretty intimidating to deal with as they are nature's perfect murder machines. Very feathery, fluffy, disgruntled, murder machines. We've had a few hawks come in that have flown into electric fences which I think triggers their murderous rage and makes them harder to handle than usual. Usually they're the ones with warning signs posted outside their cages.
When spring comes? It's chaos. So many babies everywhere and the BBR (Baby Bird Room) is full of tiny birds that have to be fed on very rigid schedules. There are people working the BBR for the 11 straight hours that the clinic is open.

 

[Brother Rabbit]

My first dog, Cthulu, was found by my mum down the street from where I used to live near the milk bar. He was barely 5 weeks old and the guys that dumped him didn't even have the decency to drive him to a shelter, just stopped the car and pushed him out. He lived with us for 13 years before he passed away 4 years ago.

I miss the old fucker.

EDIT- Didn't know M.ilk was filtered to tard cum.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

I once saw a turtle try to cross the road, pulled over, got out and carried it over to the other side so it wouldn't be hit by a car. That's all I've got.

 

[1Tonka_Truck]

I wish I had more feel good animal stories than sad ones. I grew up around horses and cattle. Shit just happens. Cattle can survive just about anything with meds; doesn't take much and you're digging a hole for a horse.

I'm not really sure how I got this job, but several times some crazy lady with too many horses would run afoul of the powers that be and I would be would called to sort the basketcases from the "never let this horse within 50' of a kid" basketcases.(Crazy ladies can't help but fuck up perfectly good horses) I'd pick out the ones that weren't a danger to themselves and others for adoption. If more needed to go, I'd hit up the cowboys I trusted to not fuck up a horse. Mostly successful putting good horses with good people. My biggest failure was a girl I grew up with taking this horse that was "never let this horse within 50' of a kid." Fucking crazy lady convinced her that the horse was only acting fucking crazy because the horse didn't like guys. I think she was projecting. Sad story short 2 years later and she'd never found anyone able to do more than put a halter on the horse and everyone besides her called him 'Tony the Psycho Pony.'

 

[Dolphin Lundgren]

This one time a baby bird fell out of the nest and ended up in the street. We picked up the bird before a car could hit it and put it back in the nest.

 

[Powerdrilldo]

all of my animals are technically rescues I think. Our corn snakes original owner refused to feed her even semi regularly because mice are gross so I dropped coin and spent 250 up front to get her out of there with the terrarium, one of my cats came from a straight up crack house, my mainecoon came from a petting zoo who was actually going to euthanize him if he wasn't given away by the time he hit adulthood, and our gecko came to us after the owner wouldn't take him to a vet for a cyst in his tail vent from being allowed to "play" with the og owners dogs who would throw him around (he's healthy now and very happy albeit missing a couple of toes).
I'm just very glad I gave them the quality of life they deserve.

 

[BipolarPon]

I work at an animal shelter and we got a load of cats, who were rescued from a hoarder. So I had to take care of them and make sure they were in good health. Hopefully none were violated like what Kero did.

 

[Toasty]

Sad part first. I lost my cat of 10 years very suddenly and tragically. I was very attached, and very hurt. I decided to go to the shelter right away. I needed fur close to me. There was an adoption event going on. All the cute kittens and friendly kitties had found homes. I saw a big grey tom who looks just like church from pet cemetery. We met, he was completely shelter shocked. I knew he had very little hope of getting adopted. He was 5 years old. I also knew I was taking him home. I sat in a room alone with him, and he made friends after 15 or 20 minutes. However, he does not deal with other people. My friends and family have only ever seen pictures. He's super velcroed on to me, playful and full of tude. I was devastated by the loss, and developing a relationship with Ghost helped me mourn without breaking. (Other really bad stuff was happening. My cat being taken from me was the cherry on the proverbial shit sundae). Anyway, had him for a year now, he just started tolerating being in the same room as my mom. Progress!