After our Brittany-King Charles mix died we knew we wanted another Brittany. We loved their energy and devoted qualities. We had seen many rescue sites along with breeders in the area. Then, we came across seeing Dona, now Dora, on the American Brittany Rescue web site.
We inquired about her immediately. It requires a lot of patience when hoping to adopt from a rescue (for good reason). We had also been told not to get our hopes up too high as many other people had wanted Dora. A month or so later we were told we were to have her! We were thrilled. Every day with her is as wonderful as the day we first took her home.
It took her a few days to warm up to us. She had a lot of love with her foster family and didn’t really want to leave. She suddenly was in a new home with a another big dog already in it! She just felt us out for a little while and within days it was like she had been with us forever.
She’s never had an accident in the house, never tried to get into the garbage. She’s good with other dogs and if she’s not interested she just moves closer to us. If she picks up something on our walks all you have to do is say “No” and she puts it right down. Walks are really hunting opportunities for her as that is all she is interested in outside. We did take her to the beach one day and within minutes she walked right in to the water with us and started paddling around.
Inside, she is just a lovable little dog that always wants to lie next to us and be rubbed. The most amazing thing about her is when you stroke her she “coos” and makes the sweetest sounds I’ve ever heard from an animal.
She is always hungry! She will eat anything except vegetables. Needless to say we are spoiling her a little too much and she is putting on a few pounds. We are calling it ‘winter weight’ and will work on it when the weather is warm again.
You can really really see Dora’s past life in Serbia in her eyes. Survival, adventure, past rescues, affection and abuse from others. It’s all there and it makes us want to even more make sure she is as happy and as wanted as she could ever be.
Sean and Nicholas, New York
From Dora’s Serbia Foster Mom
I am so happy to hear that Dona found a home!!! You made me very happy. Her life story is like a movie. I need a lot of time to tell you everything about her. My mother found here on the street when she was 4 months old, she was small and surrounded by other stray dogs which were attacking her because she was ‘new’. My mother took her and brought her to our home. We were living in a building and had our own pets. The city name is Obrenovac, 30 km from the Belgrade, the capital city of Serbia. She was at our place till she got the vaccine and was sterilised by the city of Belgrade. They do vaccination and sterilisation of stray dogs and return them to the street. After that she was around our building with other dogs, we were giving her a food and water, my father was taking her to our cottage next to the river Sava, she really loved to swim in the river. It’s 7 km far away from our building, she were running from the building to the river and back to the building. She was full of energy. In the 2014. the great flood occured in Obrenovac, everything was flooded. A lot of people were in their homes and couldn’t get out of the city. At that time she was somewhere in the woods around the cottage and we didn’t know how is she and if she is alive. After seven days mom and dad have managed to get to our cottage, the majority of dogs disappeared :((. They called her and after some time she appeared, but was in a really bad condition. We took her to a vet, (just to mention, she was one of many dogs we rescued from the street and we did and do as much as we can, paying vet, food and all other things with our own money), they did all necessary analyses and found something incredible, she was shot many times, had many bullets in her body. Hunters used the opportunity to shoot wild animals that could not move away from the water, they shot the dogs too, only she survived. Her condition was getting worse, she had blood in the lungs, the vet suggested euthanasia. We could not reconcile ourselves to that, we took her to another vet, the best known in the city of Belgrade, but he suggested the same. We started to cry but couldn’t give up of her, she was a fighter. We found a vet who wanted to try to cure her. The next 10 days were tense and uncertain. We were persistent and she was a fighter and we made it!!! She still has some bullets in her body, near the spine that shouldn’t be touched. Some time after that one older man wanted to adopt her. He had a home with a great yard. After one year and a half he came to us because he got sick and couldn’t take care of her any more. She was happy at his place. She ended up on the street again and was moving from our building to the woods around our cottage next to the river Sava. After some time she disappeared and we didn’t see her for 6 months and one day mom saw her in the center of Obrenovac city and took her to our place again. My mother Mirjana knows Goran (founder of human organisation for dog rescue) and he suggested she find her a home in America. We did the necessary tests here and we found out that she had a heart worm and started to give her medication here and I know that her treatment was continued in America.
Thank you so much for curing her and finding her a home she deserves. Her life here was hard. I told my mother the news I have got from you. You made us very happy. Thank you billion times. Sorry for my english if there are some mistakes.
Please send me some pictures of her in her new home. We cant wait to see her happy in her home.
Marija, Serbia