“Free Pup,” read an old white tile lying at the edge of a parking lot in South Carolina. It was scribbled in pink sharpie. “My name is Scooter,” it continued. “Owner went to jail today.”
Next to the tile sat a 6-year-old terrier mix. Scooter was tied to a nearby dumpster, staring into the mall parking lot.
Luckily for Scooter, two young women noticed his condition and decided to take the problem into their own hands. They untied him and took him home with them, where they cared for him and posted pictures of him online in an effort to find Scooter’s owners.
That’s when Paula Langford got involved. Langford founded the foster owner-based rescue group South Eastern Homeless Animals (SEHA). When she saw Scooter’s pictures on the internet, she saw it as her responsibility to lend a helping hand.
“I just reached out to them and said, ‘I’ll take the dog,'” said Langford. “I have a microchip scanner, I’ll get him scanned and validate the story first. And then we’ll get him wherever it is that he belongs.”
Langford met the two young women at a gas station, where she picked up Scooter. Something about Langford must have struck Scooter as trustworthy; he immediately relaxed in her arms as if she was his original owner. That surprised her, as did the fact that Scooter appeared well-groomed and well-fed.
“As soon as I saw him, I knew this was a loved pet,” Langford remembered. “He was clean, he was flea-free. He was abandoned with an expensive carrying case for him, an expensive collar, a bag of grain-free dog food.”
“He was a bit nervous, but very sweet and very loving,” Langford remembered. “He wanted to cuddle. It was kind of precious, because on the way home, he kind of laid his head on my chest and just did this big sigh, and king of melted into me and went back to sleep.”
“It was obvious that he was a snuggly, well-cared-for dog,” she deduced. “He wasn’t just a throwaway.”
Langford couldn’t help but care for Scooter. Instead of putting him into foster care, she took him back to her house to take care of him personally.
When she scanned his microchip, she was hit with another big surprise.
“We discovered that he is originally from Colorado,” she said. “We tried to contact the number on the microchip, but the number was disconnected.”
Scooter’s story went deeper.
“The microchip company informed me that he’d been found in 2015 in Colorado, and then again in 2016 in St. Petersburg, Florida and that he’d been returned to the owner, but that’s all he knew. And then, all of the sudden, he’s in South Carolina!”
Langford kept digging. She managed to track down the officer who arrested Scooter’s owner and found out that had indeed been arrested. The man had not wanted Scooter to go to a shelter, so he entrusted him to his friends. His friends abandoned Scooter.
“They have issued an arrest warrant for those two individuals for the abandonment,” Langford assured.
As for Scooter, he’s doing fine now.
Langford decided to adopt him.
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(h/t) The Dodo
