How We Found Marlee

On August 10, 2008 we saw a pitiful dog staggering down the middle of the road. Cars were slowing down, honking, and going around her when she showed no response. We went out to try to call her to come off the road, not quite sure what we were getting into. Her behavior was so odd that we wondered if she had rabies, or had already been hit by a car, or what.

Despite our efforts she just kept walking down the middle of the road for about 10 minutes. Eventually we used some food from the dinner table to coax her to the side. Then we could see that she was emaciated--truly starving, and in quite bad condition. Her fur was filled with burrs, and she was very weak. She ate the food we gave her, but showed no signs of being aggressive toward us nor about protecting her food.

A neighbor was driving by while we were on the side of the road. He stopped to say that he thought he had witnessed a dog being dumped out of a truck farther down our road earlier in the evening.

We had planned to call the dog warden to come take this dog away, but once we saw her weakened condition, we felt that if we turned her over to someone else she would probably be euthanized right away, because she didn't seem to have much going for her. We decided to let her sleep in our fenced in back yard overnight, and take her to the vet in the morning.