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The Growing Sanctuary Population

June 14, 2014 by Pamela Parker Caird Leave a Comment

How could one resist this face?

June 08, 2014 at 0854AM

Well, we didn’t. This is Cocoa, our eldest son’s dog, who joined the family after our softhearted child saw one of those awful tear-jerking sad-animal commercials on TV, and came to us crying and determined to do something to help. Of course, help couldn’t just be donating a few bucks to the cause — we had to bring another creature home.

Since his parents are equally softhearted, and because we want to encourage him to be a good citizen and contribute however he can to the good of the world, Cocoa joined our family last weekend. She’d been found by the side of the road in March, and has been residing ever since with the good people of Stray Acres Sanctuary & Animal Rescue, located in the next town. (We encourage you to support them, and other rescues, however you can!)

She’s got a beautiful spirit, but you can certainly tell Cocoa hasn’t had the easiest life. She cowers and shies when you’re holding something she thinks could be used to hit her, and, even when she’s feeling fairly confident, she’s always underfoot seeking reassurance — and food. Still, despite an incident when she was discovered to have a baby chick in her paws(!!), her transition to family dog has been fairly smooth. It’s taken Honey a little while, but I thinks she’s enjoying having another young canine to play with, and guard with…

June 08, 2014 at 0905AM

Cocoa was originally described as an Anatolian Shepherd/Great Pyrenees mix, and I can see the resemblance to an Anatolian — a livestock guardian breed with roots in Turkey — but she’s much smaller than either an Anatolian or a Pyr. Whatever her genetics, she’s slowly but surely becoming a part of the family, though we need to work on that chicken-chasing!

Speaking of which, it seems like every day our little girls are looking more like genuine hens (officially, they are pullets, and don’t become hens until they are a year old). We had a heartbreaking few hours this week (after the dog/chick incident) when two of them were missing without a trace, and the only hope we could come up with — after an extensive search — was that we didn’t see any feathers or blood. But Cocoa was definitely in the dog house. Thankfully, a while later, the missing chicks turned up — they’d apparently been hiding, and hiding well.

These pics are from a week ago, and they’re already much more fully-feathered today.

June 07, 2014 at 0748PM

June 07, 2014 at 0749PM

Filed Under: Family, Livestock

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