After a near-death experience and weeks of anguish, a little girl’s grateful new puppy is back home.

Falling in love

When Kate Stockton of Erie, Pa. first saw Northern Chautauqua Canine Rescue resident Sully’s picture on Petfinder.com, it was love. His questionable parentage had resulted in a wiry coat, a comical underbite, a pinkish snout, one ear up and one flopped down, and eyes so sad they should come with their own Blues soundtrack.

“I was scrolling through, and I saw this face; this terrified, goofy-looking dog. I read his story, about how scared and heartbroken he was to be surrendered, and I just could not let go of that image,” she said.

Then Stockton showed Sully’s picture to her four-year-old daughter, Olivia.

“That puppy has a pig nose,” the little girl said.

“That was it. I knew we had to have him,” reasoned Kate.

But there was a complication – one in a long line of many that would eventually break Stockton’s heart and cause every volunteer at NCCR to lose sleep.

“I was moving in a month and a half,” said Stockton. “It was terrible timing. (But eventually) we went to meet him, and I put in an application. I asked how he would do with a small child and two cats, and Marcia (Okerlund), director of NCCR, said he would do great.”

Stockton was hesitant about bringing Sully home for a couple of weeks, then moving him, but Okerlund told her he wasn’t doing well at the shelter.

“Sully was actually adopted from NCCR twice,” explained Okerlund. “The first time he came to us, he was a tiny puppy with his mom and siblings. He was adopted by a woman back then, but returned after about two years, because (the adopter) moved. He was scared to death when he came back here – just so upset by the upheaval of being surrendered and finding himself at the shelter again.”

Okerlund said it took Sully a week to even wag his tail a bit, and when he did, the volunteers cheered.

“He was just so pathetic,” said Okerlund. “Pitiful. That’s what got Kate about him. She said she always goes for the underdog.”

As a single mom who works in the healthcare field, Stockton empathizes with those who are struggling. She knew she and Olivia could provide Sully with the love he would need to trust people again, so she called Okerlund and asked if they could come and get their dog. Their application was approved.

Stockton and her daughter brought their boy home on October 29th. They would only have him for 14 hours.

Bad luck strikes

The very day after Sully was introduced to his new (temporary) home, Stockton’s father was heading out the door after a visit when Sully bolted.

“My parents had come over to watch my daughter while I was at work, and Sully ran out the door,” Stockton said. “When my dad called me to tell me, my heart sank. I knew how scared (Sully) was, and he hadn’t had time to get used to us. He didn’t know the area. My dad didn’t see him anywhere; that’s the thing about Sully. He’s so fast. He could have been anywhere. The chances we’d get him back were so slim. I knew that. How would we ever find him?”

Stockton mobilized immediately.

“She did all the right things,” said Okerlund of Stockton’s efforts. “She did just what a person should do if they lose a dog.”

Stockton left work and called Okerlund to tell her what happened. She contacted every vet, police department and shelter in the area; posted Sully as missing on all the Facebook pages she could; and made flyers and hung them around town and left them in people’s mailboxes. She paid to have a missing pet service contact every household and business in her area. She hiked through the woods and fields near her home, calling Sully’s name.

“I was desperate,” she said. “We’d had him for less than a day, but we loved him already. I had to get him back; he was my responsibility.”

But Sully did not want to be caught.

“Everywhere we went, he was two steps ahead of us,” Stockton said. “Someone would call us and say they saw Sully, but by the time we’d get to the area, he’d be gone. Hunters said they’d seen him. He was eating crab apples and cat food. And what was so frustrating was that I never saw him. All of these other people kept seeing him. I was always too late.”

Search parties of friends and NCCR volunteers were organized. Sully’s picture was shared hundreds of times on social media.

“The response from people was amazing,” Stockton said. “So many people were out looking for him, trying to bring him home. I’m so grateful for their efforts.”

But then, after about a week and half of Sully sightings, the calls stopped.

“I thought, ‘Is this it? Is he gone?'” Stockton remembered. “I drove around, looking along the side of the road. Even if he’d been hit, I needed to find him. I had to have closure.”

But, like Sully, closure proved elusive for Stockton. And things would only get worse.

“On the 13th of November, we found arrows in the woods,” Stockton said. “The area was posted. No one should have been hunting there. I looked at the people (who were searching with me). I said, ‘It couldn’t be, could it? There’s no way…'”

Stockton’s voice trailed off. No one wanted to give words to what she was imagining. But the searchers picked up their pace.

On Nov. 14, the time had come for Stockton and Olivia to move.

“It was awful,” she said. “Things were crazy. I’m a single mom, and I was working, taking care of Olivia, painting, packing, moving, all the while looking for Sully, hoping to hear from someone. It was a terrible, terrible time.”

A week had gone by with no sightings, no reports. Stockton wasn’t looking forward to a Christmas without the pup she’d imagined would share the holiday.

“Olivia talked about Sully a lot,” she said. “She missed him. She was sad. I told her I was sad, too.”

Hope returns

“Finally, after about eight days, we got another call,” said Stockton. “It was the 16th. The man who called said he fed stray cats, and he was pretty sure Sully was eating the food. I left work and went over there, and didn’t see anything. Of course, he was gone again, if he had ever been there in the first place. On a chance, though, I went into the woods there and just wandered. And I saw him. It was the first time I had actually seen him. I yelled for him, and he looked at me. But he just kept running.”

Stockton knew Sully was a shrinking violet, and it would only make matters worse if she chased him. So, again, she did the smart thing and called Okerlund.

“I knew she would know what to do,” said Stockton of the long-time animal rescuer. “She’s a dog whisperer. I turned it over to her. It killed me to back off, but I knew I had to if I had any chance of getting Sully back.”

Okerlund set a humane trap in the man’s yard, baited with food. First, they caught one of the feral cats. Next, it was a skunk. Still no Sully.

“I’d seen him, though,” said Okerlund. “I lay down in the field and flipped pieces of hot dog to him. At first, I didn’t see that he was injured. But then he turned around to run away – that’s when I saw his tail. It was awful.”

What she saw was horrific: Sully had a deep gash across his flank. Something had ripped him open. His tail had been nearly severed, and the necrotic tissue was hanging on by a thin strip of flesh. The wound was full of dirt and worse. On top of all of this, Sully was so, very skinny.

“When I saw that I made up my mind,” Okerlund said. “I told my husband, ‘I’m going there tomorrow and I’m not coming back until I have him. If we don’t get him he’s going to die.'”

Okerlund knew what she was talking about. Cold weather was setting in, and between infection and starvation, the emaciated, injured Sully wouldn’t survive much longer.

“She told me he was hurt,” Stockton said. “I didn’t know how he was still running. My heart broke for him out there, alone. He was so scared.”

But Stockton stuck to the plan; it had to be Okerlund.

“(Sully) trusted her. If I showed up, I would scare him off and it would ruin everything. So we kept calling back and forth. I didn’t sleep,” she said.

Rescue

A very determined Okerlund showed up early in the morning on Nov. 18, and parked her van at the edge of a parking lot that overlooked Sully’s latest hiding grounds. And she came prepared.

“I brought my dog Teagan,” she said. “Sully always liked other dogs, so I thought that would help. And I brought hot dogs, his favorite, and really smelly wet cat food, some leftover chicken alfredo, and cooked sausage. And sedatives.”

Okerlund clanked metal food bowls together, and Sully came out from his hiding place. She stuck half a pill into a dish of cat food and set it out, then backed away. Sully came out and wolfed it down.

“Then I followed him, but I lost him. That was the worst thing I could have imagined,” she said. “Losing him after he had eaten the pill. Who knows where he would pass out. And then how would we find him?”

But then her phone rang in her pocket. Someone had seen Sully, back by her van. He had circled around her.

“I went down and filled the food dish up three, four times,” she said. “Sully just kept eating. But I still couldn’t get near him. He’d back away. Twice I got him to eat from my hand, but then he’d run. Two hours of this, and I gave him another half a pill.”

Okerlund has a large collie at home. A half a pill relaxes him. A whole pill knocks him out.

“He never stopped moving,” she said. “I had to leave the parking lot twice to run to Kmart for more food. The amount of food he ate was amazing. I couldn’t believe it. At 2 p.m., I gave him another half a pill.”

When the situation seemed hopeless, Okerlund got Teagan out of the van.

“I thought, ‘There’s nothing to lose now. He’s had a pill and a half. I’ll just follow him.'”

They walked around and saw Sully in the woods. By then, though, the poor guy must have decided he was ready to once again be rescued.

“He walked right up to us,” Okerlund said. “I reached down and patted his head. I slipped the leash on him, and I said ‘Let’s go home.’ We got in the van, and I called (Stockton).”

Recovery

There was no time for a reunion yet, though. Okerlund told Stockton she had to take Sully straight to the vet. His injuries were even ghastlier up close, and Okerlund feared they might be too late.

“She said he had to get to the vet right then, that it was an emergency,” said Stockton. “I told her of course – please.”

At the vet’s that day, faces were grave as Sully’s injuries were discussed.

“I saw his injuries, and I just sat down and cried. One of the (NCCR) volunteers said ‘What about an arrow?’ and it all clicked,” said Stockton. “We’d seen the arrows in the woods. We’d had complaints from hunters; some of them were angry that we were out in the woods looking for Sully, shouting his name and scaring away the deer. But how could someone?”

How indeed, but it seems the likely answer. Sully’s wounds required four layers of stitches and staples. The arrow cut deep into his backside, almost completely severing the leg muscle and cutting off his tail a few inches from the base.

And an accident doesn’t seem likely.

“Sully looks nothing like a deer,” said Stockton. “He was just a scared, lost dog in the woods. For someone to do that – my God.”

Sully’s injuries required two surgeries to close the flesh on his side and remove the dead portion of his tail. Stockton was able to bring him home the next day – exactly three weeks from the day she had first brought him home.

“I had to sit my daughter down and talk about his injuries with her; she had to be prepared for what she was about to see. It was scary to look at, even for me. He had lost over a third of his body weight. She had to understand that he was really hurt, and that she had to be careful with him.”

Olivia did wonderfully, treating her miracle dog like he was made of glass.

“She knew he had boo-boos, and that she couldn’t touch his backside at all. She was so gentle. If he was in her way, she would just wait for me to lift her over him; she was that afraid that she would hurt him.”

Olivia knows, perhaps, more than Stockton would like her to.

“She says ‘The bad man cut his tail off.’ I didn’t tell her that, only that he had a boo-boo. But then I had to tell her ‘Yes, someone shot him with an arrow, and that was the wrong thing to do.'”

Sully is recovering, but it will take time. He is still in pain, and can’t sit down; he must stand or lie down. In addition to being shot, he was covered in ticks, so Stockton has to take him back to the vet to be tested for Lyme disease. He has gained almost ten pounds, but needs to gain more. He is traumatized, and sometimes, when he’s playing, he gets spooked and runs and hides.

“As anxious as he is, he’s the sweetest thing. He adores us,” Stockton gushed, a woman in love with her funny-faced patient. “He wags his half a tail. It’s so cute. He’s so good with Olivia. The first few days, he followed us everywhere. He sits with us when I read Olivia bedtime stories, and then he says goodnight to her. He doesn’t give kisses, but he gives little hugs. He puts his face next to mine and gives me a little push.”

Stockton said she has no adequate way to express her gratitude for the dozens and dozens of people who have helped get Sully home.

“I don’t know why everyone responded to him like they did, but without the help of so many people I would have never gotten him back,” she said. “I have had pet stores offer us free supplies, a trainer has volunteered her time to help him get over some of his anxiety, and people have donated money toward his vet bills. There’s a Zumba-thon scheduled for the end of January to raise money. There are so many people to thank; where do I even start?”

In his new home, Sully has a fenced back yard and plenty of room to (affectionately) chase the cats. He plants himself outside Olivia’s door when she talks in her sleep, and comes to wake up Stockton if the little girl has a nightmare. Santa will be visiting him for Christmas.

“He’s ours and we love him. He’s our family,” Stockton said.

To help with Sully’s medical bills, send donations to the Sully Fund, NCCR at 7540 N. Gale St., Westfield NY, 14787. Anything left over will be used to help Sully’s friends at the shelter find their own forever homes. To see who’s available for adoption, visit www.caninerescue.org.