It was 122 degrees outside …
When Raf.kw, a rescue based in Kuwait, saw a video of a dog wandering in the desert all alone, they sprang into action. On the day they set out to look for her, it was 122 degrees Fahrenheit outside. That kind of heat can be deadly, and they knew they had to find her fast.
After searching for a bit, they eventually found the pup, later named Sandy, hiding under a water tank. She’d dug a hole underneath it to keep herself cool and out of the sun — and to hide something very important to her.
Sweet Sandy was guarding a small pile of puppies. She desperately wanted her little family to be safe, and at first, she wasn’t sure if she could trust the rescuers with her babies.
“She was looking at us, and she was looking at her puppies, as if to say, ‘Well, I’ve got puppies with me. Are you going to hurt me?’” Danna with Raf.kw said in a video for The Dodo. “She was just a mommy protecting her babies. I don’t even think she cared about the heat or being abandoned or anything that happened to her.”
The team approached Sandy and her puppies slowly, working to gain her trust. They offered her food and talked to her in soothing voices. They wanted her to know that they were there to help her. After about 15 minutes, Sandy allowed the rescuers to reach into the hole and pull her puppies out to safety.
“Once she was in the crate, she just knew that she was safe,” Danna said. “It was day and night. She’d gone from this protective, terrified, abandoned mother to, honestly, just looking at us and saying, ‘I know what you’re doing. Thank you.’”
Danna’s friend, Elika Mansouri, runs a shelter called I Care Kuwait, which helps find dogs in Kuwait homes in the U.S. and Canada. Sandy and her puppies were taken there to recover and fully learn to trust people, and that’s where Sandy ended up meeting her forever mom, Brianna.
“She would follow Brianna around everywhere,” Danna said. “She was so happy.”
Sandy’s puppies, Zeus, Zaydar and Zack, were adopted by a family in Canada and are now absolutely thriving. The entire family found their happy endings, all thanks to Sandy and how well she protected them until help arrived.
