The St. Louis Senior Dog Project is a not-for-profit dog rescue organization specializing in older dogs but taking in and finding homes for dogs of all ages. See our adoptable pets at www.olderbetter.petfinder.org. And keep voting to help us win a grant. We're still #1 in Missouri, but #2 is close behind us. You can vote every day until the contest ends later this month.
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Ellen's Notes:
Scotty is back home on his farm near Wichita. He's lucky to be alive, and he seems happy to be back with those he knows.
But he certainly took the long road home, and for awhile last week I wasn't sure where he would be happiest. With the arrival of the pictures shown here, I think he's in the right place.
Scotty is a highly trained working dog, skilled at herding cattle. But he has a lousy sense of direction, something that got him in trouble when he wandered off a month or so ago. His owners felt sure someone would find him and notice the phone number on his collar. Nobody did, though, and Scotty ended up in a local "high kill" shelter. Evidentally no one noticed the phone number there, either. Or if they did, the call got lost, erased or who knows what.
Three times Scotty was scheduled for euthanasia. Three times staff crossed him on the list. They liked him. Then someone contacted us about possibly taking this older dog. They described him as a 10-year-old smooth collie mix. He was actually an 8-year-old purebred border collie.
We agreed, and several volunteers got him transported from Wichita to St. Louis. We named him Conner and quickly fell for his charms. We were told that the shelter had called the owners, and no one had come for him. That seemed hard to believe.....but it happens all the time.
Then Conner jumped a fence here and met someone new, someone who did notice the phone number and our tag and called both. Suddenly we had ecstatic owners who wanted him back. But I had concerns. Before sending him back to Wichita, I needed to know that this was really best for him. I still had trouble understanding how his owners hadn't visited the local shelters more looking for him.
But after many emails and phone calls and a few family pictures, they won me over. One of the family's sons picked him up and Conner/Scotty went back home. He went home microchipped and with additional ID tags.
The pictures show Scotty with his owner revisiting the farm, Scotty with one of the sons and another of the border collies, and Scotty with one of the grandchildren. He looks happy.
But I wonder what he thinks of all this.
Ellen Ellick
President/Founder
St. Louis Senior Dog Project
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