One night after having a seizure, Tara disappeared into the treacherous 4 acres of native bush on the property. Her owner Ray and I searched as far as we could see to no avail. It was late at night and pitch black in a very dense bush. To complicate matters, Tara was born completely deaf so wasn’t going to answer to our calls. I even tried to set my other male Samoyed Blake into the thickness of it all to do a search, but he turned and hid behind my legs. No way was he going into that scary abyss in the dark! So I took this scaredy-cat back to the house and went to bed worried.
Now, this is where my Siberian Samoyed Noah fits into this true dog story. Noah has a lot of lady-friends because he is just too handsome, and Tara is a bit of a cougar as Noah is only 6 years old. By that time I had introduced Noah to the harness and he had the chore of taking the rubbish up to the gate which he loved to do. So I put the harness on my boy and let him lead me into the bush in places where Ray couldn’t squeeze into. This was a long process with Noah being very patient with me trying not to fall down the steep hill. He was great at giving me balance.
Once in the thick of this prehistoric jungle, I asked Noah to ‘go find Tara’ not knowing if he would pick up her scent or a possum’s. But bless his heart, suddenly his nose caught something and he was pulling me down further picking up speed. He was onto something! He stopped when we got to a thick tangle of branches and fallen Kanuka trees, sniffing the air, searching. I got down low and looked through the fallen trees and there she was! A cold dread ran through me because there was Tara lying motionless in a pool of mud. As well as being devastated that the old Dalmatian may have passed away, I thought “How the heck are we going to get her out of here? We’ll need a winch!”
Noah and I made our way down to the found dog and once he realized that I had seen what he had only smelled, he bounded ahead barking. When he reached her, our dog rescuer gave her a nudge and a sniff, and all of a sudden, Tara’s head popped up and she growled at poor Noah, indignant that he had awoken her. I was elated and checked her over for injuries while she wondered what all the fuss was about. Noah barked his usual proclamations being such a vocal Siberian Samoyed. I can’t believe how tough that girl is because there wasn’t a scratch on her. She was only muddy as hell. Now the hard part was getting us all out. Tara is 30kgs and was wobbly on her legs after her hard night and she has arthritis in her rear end too. Noah’s job wasn’t done yet. I tied a leash onto the found dog and connected it to Noah and our muscular dog rescuer pulled us all up the hill with his trusty harness. I had to help by pushing Tara when she just couldn’t get a footing. Noah was getting pretty knackered and would sit down refusing to go any further at times. I think he was a bit over it all by then and told me so. So we’d wait for him and then he moved on when he was ready. At the end of it, we were all very wet and muddy, but after two hours we were home. Tara trotted up to her very relieved Dad and after a bath, slept the rest of the day. I told Ray that he owes Noah, the dog savior, a juicy steak, and we’re still waiting! A very proud Samoyed Mum Marilyn Begg
Guest written specially for the Russian Dog website.
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