This true story about a very brave boxer girl just happened last week in Austin, Texas, which is where Aunt Cheryl lives. And of course my boyfriend, Hank, lives there too.
And what happened was that this boxer named Vandy was in a shelter in Dallas, but nobody adopted her, and the shelter was really, really full. So some of the dogs, including Vandy, were going to be euthanized (which is a fancy way of saying "killed"). But at the last minute, a group of nice people called Austin Boxer Rescue decided they could take Vandy, and she went to live with a foster family in a town called Pflugerville. Which is a very funny name for a town, if you ask me.
Anyway, a day or two after Vandy got to her foster home, she was out in the yard with the foster family's boxer and her foster dad and the family's little boy, who is 16 months old. And everybody was running around in the yard while the dad grilled hamburgers, and then the dad saw something moving in the grass, so he told everybody to come away from there. The family dog and the little boy did that, but Vandy went and got in front of the boy.
And then it turned out that there was a rattlesnake there in the grass! So Vandy got bit, but the little boy was safe. Then Vandy's foster dad killed the snake, and he thought everybody was okay. But Vandy's neck swelled up really big, and she started acting sick, so the family took her right to the emergency vet clinic. And there she got anti-venom and also some IV fluids, so she didn't die. And now Vandy is home again, and her story was on TV and it was on the internet, which is where I saw it.
So the moral of this story is that even the most ordinary shelter dogs can turn out to be heroes. All they need is somebody to love them and give them a chance.
Oh, and another moral is that unless you are trying to save somebody's life, you should stay away from rattlesnakes!
