“It was so dangerous …”
As a dog lover and volunteer rescuer, Rosario Ortiz always looks for stray pups in her area. She’s used to finding and saving dogs in dangerous settings, but one pup she recently encountered in her Los Angeles, California, neighborhood broke her heart more than most.
Just along the train tracks lay an off-white fluffy Pomeranian with nowhere to go. The railroad track appeared to be his home; the industrial storage container beside it was his bed.
“Thank goodness Rosario Ortiz noticed him under the container, so small and curled up,” Suzette Hall, founder of Logan’s Legacy 29, wrote on Facebook. Ortiz immediately called Hall for backup, and the seasoned rescuer raced to the railway track. When Hall arrived over an hour later, the sweet boy was still exactly where Ortiz had found him.
“He was still asleep under the container when I got there,” Hall wrote. Hall set her trap with warm, enticing food and hid in the distance to give the pup space to investigate. As expected, the hungry dog wriggled out from under the storage container and walked towards the trap. Just as he was about to step inside, a passerby accidentally spooked him and foiled the plan.
“[A] lady came from behind and scared him, and he went running,” Hall wrote. “We held our [breaths]. [It was] so dangerous, a fluffy boy running down the tracks …” Hall and Ortiz didn’t waste a minute. They got into their respective cars and started following the sprinting pup. Before long, they cornered him into a fenced-in area and used baby gates to block the only exit.
The rescuers crept slowly toward the dog until they were close enough to reach down and grab him. Minutes later, Ortiz secured the pup in her arms, and the two celebrated their exhausting accomplishment. When Hall loaded the dog, later named Marshmallow, into her car, she saw just how relieved he was to be saved.
“The best part was [when] he knew he was safe, he could hardly keep his eyes open and laid all the way to [in the] back of the trap,” Hall wrote. “He didn’t have to live on the railroad tracks or sleep hiding under that trailer ever again. He was rescued.”
Hall drove Marshmallow to Camino Pet Hospital, where the resilient boy received a much-needed bath and a clean bill of health. He soon found the perfect foster match and went off to his temporary home to decompress. Marshmallow has been thriving in his foster home since his arrival, and his personality has fully blossomed now that he feels safe. While Hall hopes to find him a forever home soon, she’s relieved that he finally has the life he deserves.
“Marshmallow is the biggest cuddle bug ever,” Hall said. “He is beyond happy to be saved. He just cuddles into your arms.”