Stray Pup Chases a Doggie Day-Care Bus and Gets Adopted
3 min read
Nellie and Waylon comfortable in the Keller Creek Boarding & Grooming pup bus.
A persistent Lab now has a new home in Georgia after the doggy, insistent on getting attention, ran several miles parallel to a doggie daycare bus until the driver was won over to give him a new home.
This is how the story begins in Franklin County, when the driver of the ‘pup bus’ made his rounds to bring clients’ dogs into daycare.
There to greet him at a house he knew, waiting for the bus just like normal, was a Labrador retriever named Motley who had visited Keller Creek Boarding and Grooming for three years. Only this time, he had a buddy. Keller Creek owner Tyson Cash called Motley’s owners to ask about who the new pup was, but to his double surprise, the owners said they hadn’t adopted any new dogs.
They did say, however, that there was a stray Lab around for several days and people in the neighborhood had been feeding it and letting it occasionally stay on their property. Keller Creek is a very responsible doggie daycare facility, and Cash just couldn’t risk letting some stray get on board.
“I didn’t know about his vaccination status. I didn’t know if he was on flea and tick prevention,” said Cash. “I didn’t want to jeopardize all the other dogs, [but] he wanted on the bus badly. He was doing everything he could to get on with the other dogs.”
He steeled himself, drove off, but the yellow Lab gave chase. His heart aching, Cash asked his wife to take a video and a photo of the dog alongside the bus to post on social media in case any of his people in the area recognized who his owners were.
A crazy dog dad through and through, Cash was wondering if there was any way he could find room in his house—filled with 9 other pooches, as things stood—for this dog desperate for company. But fate, fortune, and a friendly soul stayed Cash’s hand.
Also onboard the pup bus was Nellie, another yellow Lab, whose owner saw the Facebook post and felt even worse than Cash did.
“To see a dog so desperate to catch a ride was very heartbreaking,” she told the Washington Post. “I thought, I’ve got to reach out and see if anybody has a home for this dog. If not, I want him.”
Ask and you shall receive. Pearce was put in touch with a woman who’d been letting the stray hang around her property—she’d named him Waylon, but her two dogs were coming into heat, so she had to turn him loose once more.
Pearce and her boyfriend took the dog in to see the vet: he was in terrible condition, riddled with ticks and fleas, and malnourished. They also discovered that Waylon had a microchip, and the manufacturer was able to arrange for a transfer of ownership to be made from the previous owners to Pearce without the latter learning anything about the former.
Now Nellie and Waylon are inseparable—the former follows the latter everywhere, and their Pearce home is drenched in joy and cuddles.
So, last week, Waylon finally managed to get his wish—a ride on the pup bus when he climbed aboard alongside his new sister to the delight of Cash who said it was the best ending to the story anyone could have hoped for.
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