Twiggy

• Sex: ♀
• Neutered: ✅
• Vaccinated: ✅

In autumn 2022, Twiggy — already sterilized and vaccinated — escaped from foster care before her planned release. An independent lady simply decided not to wait for permission. For many months we continued following her story from a distance. She never again allowed us to come close, but we understood that she was safe — at least as safe as street life can be. Eventually, we decided to leave her in peace.

And below is her story.

In May 2022, people noticed an exhausted adult dog limping on one paw. The plan was to catch her, treat the injury, sterilize her, and release her back. But she skillfully avoided every attempt to catch her. She would only approach food after people moved a safe distance away.

One day, we followed her to her shelter. It turned out to be under an abandoned garage near a busy road, inside a pit filled with garbage. The dog disappeared beneath the garage, and soon we heard quiet squeaking sounds. We spent a long time waiting there, listening, calling, and shining flashlights into the darkness. Eventually, we spotted puppies, though at first we could not tell how many there were.

Every day we stayed near that garage. Every day the dog came for food, ate, and disappeared back underneath it. We saw that her stomach and chest were covered in cuts and wounds — she was injuring herself on broken glass bottles and sharp cans while crawling to her puppies.

After many days, we were close to despair. The puppies had started coming out on their own, and they were growing quickly. Every day we became more afraid that they would wander onto the road and get hit by a car.

We could not wait any longer. We decided to rescue the puppies first and then continue helping the mother dog. There turned out to be two puppies — a boy and a girl. As soon as the puppies were placed into the car and taken to the clinic, their mother came up to us herself, calmly allowed us to put a collar on her, and went to the clinic with us.

The puppies turned out to be healthy and very large for their age — just over one month old. We named them Luke and Leia. Their mother, because of her thinness, was named Twiggy. X-rays showed that her paw was not broken, only bruised. In foster care, Twiggy gained weight, her leg healed, and she continued feeding the puppies. The puppies turned out to be wonderful dogs, and both found homes by the end of summer.

Twiggy continued living in foster care. She regularly escaped, and each time we caught her and brought her back. But after one of those escapes, we could no longer return her — Twiggy would run away the moment she saw us, even from several hundred meters away.

After months of trying, we made the difficult decision to leave her alone. At least sterilized and vaccinated, her life on the street would be easier.

This is not a happy ending. But it is real life. And it was the best we could give her.

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