Lulu’s Rescue Dog Story

Lulu’s Story

Lulu – a petite, black Labrador, came into our lives, via Labrador Rescue. Little is known of her background other than she was “used” for some form of research  prior to being re-homed by Labrador Rescue’s volunteer: Sonya.

As well as wanting to provide a loving home environment for such as Lulu, we also wanted to provide a companion for Lucy – our existing black Labrador, without either dog feeling they were in competition for our attention. We collected Lulu from the airport and the first thing she wanted to do, when released from her crate, was make a bolt for it – who can blame her? She sat with Ann on the drive to the ferry (we live on an island) and then had to suffer a muzzle whilst on the ferry. Another traumatic car ride from the ferry brought her home and she met Lucy.

From that point on – thank God, everything started to look up – her tail started wagging and has hardly stopped since.

It is hard to believe that the happy little dog we see now is the same, timid, jumpy and nervous animal we first met just over a month ago.

The “bogey man” who stopped her from coming in through the back door after dark has disappeared, the occasional sudden noises or movements still make her jump sometimes – but less and less so as time goes on. Getting into the car, to go for a walk still involves a lift – but getting out poses no problem at all. She knows, almost to the minute, when it is feed time and is happy to share this knowledge if we are a bit tardy. At first, her frequent walks on the beach with Lucy, involved her walking to heel for the whole time – now she explores and has the occasional “brain explosion” – running flat-out for no apparent reason other than she can.
Perhaps one of the nicest things to observe is that Lucy (been there – done that) looks after her whilst walking and has gone back and “rescued” her a couple of times by leading her through if she has become nervous.

Perhaps the saddest things to observe – obviously a result of her past experiences, are her continued fear of feet and quick hand movements (she’s obviously been beaten on a regular basis) and the perception that she just doesn’t know how to play – squeaky toys mean nothing to her, a ball thrown to chase doesn’t even rate a glance.

It is hard to believe the changes we have seen in Lulu over such a short period of time – any reservations that we might have had that bringing her into our lives was the right thing to do – for her, for Lucy or ourselves, were put to rest almost instantly and we thank Labrador Rescue in general (and Sonya in particular) for giving us this opportunity.