Hettie is a little elderly dog who arrived at the Sanctuary at the end of 2006. She is very sweet but is loosing her eyesight. Awful to think that she was on death row at a dog pound at her time of life - but she is just one of 1000's.
Please e mail me if you would like to sponsor Hettie Wainthrope or any of the Dogs or other animals at the Sanctuary
We would love to hear from you, as Hettie has no sponsors
Hettie is a very curious little dog which is why we extended her name to Hettie Wainthrope (assuming you are familiar with the character !). Anyway, Hettie's investigation nearly cost her dearly early this week !
Hettie lives in the house with the main gang of dogs and clearly we need to leave the back door open all the time so that they have the opportunity to access the back patio to do their business etc - Tests have shown that this method of toilet control is effective for almost 23% of the time ! I mean why go outside in the cold when you can go in the lounge for instance??....
Anyway, on Tuesday night after we had gone to bed - Charley one of the other dogs would not settle - he was very restless - after a while we got a feeling that something was wrong, so got up to check the house. The dog roll call revealed that Hettie was missing ! She normally sleeps in a particular armchair in the lounge but there was no sign of her.
After a thorough search we got our coats on & went outside with torches. It was now about midnight, but there was no sign of Hettie. The Dogs are prevented from wandering down to the fields by sheep hurdles which line the back
patio - however close inspection revealed that one hurdle had been pushed & there was a small gap - a gap big enough for Hettie to investigate her way through.
We went down to the fields & past the chicken areas & searched everywhere for about 20 minutes - nothing. We were getting to the "point of panic" when Martin went to check another field & there in the distance in the torch beam he thought he saw a black & white cat - but it looked a little big for a cat & wasn't moving. The field was quite muddy and on advancing towards the shape he soon saw that it was Hettie who was sitting quite still - clearly lost.
She was quickly scooped up & taken back to the house where we dried her with towels & a hair dryer. She was clearly a little upset and we decided that the best place for her to warm up was in bed under the duvet ! She finally settled down at about 3 am - another good nights sleep all round !
The next morning she was 100% again BUT has moved into Sam's room (Sam is Blind) and is living with him until we can sort out the gap in the fencing this weekend. Hopefully her future investigations will be less dramatic !
