Photo: CBS News
As the operator of
Love Me Tender animal rescue, Kathy Wilkes-Myers has saved hundreds of dogs, but she's never dealt with a lost pup like Ella.
The saga began one evening this summer when Wilkes-Myers was driving home from work in central Tennessee. On a rural stretch of highway, she spotted a rottweiler along the side of the road. Always on the lookout for dogs in need of help, she stopped the car and approached the black and brown pup.
"I called her, and to my amazement she crawled toward me and tucked her little head under my arm," Wilkes-Myers tells Paw Nation. Emaciated but friendly, it was immediately clear to Wilkes-Myers that this sweet, trusting dog had come from a loving home.
Near the spot where she found the dog, Wilkes-Myers noticed broken glass and skid marks. As she walked the dog back toward her car, she spotted something else -- a pile of personal items, seemingly gathered up by the dog. "I saw this scratched out nest, and all this stuff in the nest," she says -- a toothbrush, a comb, a single shoe.
On the drive back to her house, Wilkes-Myers remembered a terrible car crash she'd driven past at almost that very spot nearly two weeks earlier. She guessed that the dog survived that accident and had gathered up her family's belongings left over from the crash. "I guess that helped give her some comfort," Wilkes-Myers tells Paw Nation.
Using the clues she discovered along the side of the road, Wilkes-Myers began the hunt for the dog's family. She called the highway patrol and an insurance company whose number she found written on a water-soaked notepad at the crash site. Eventually she learned the name of the family who had been involved in the crash.
Source
"Hachi: A Dog's Tale" DVD Giveaway
