Millie’s magical miracle
Starving and dragging a broken leg, this dog with the heart of a lion made it through the snow just as her owner gave up hope
The vet said she was hours from death. She’s a hero
WHEN Miracle Millie tears along the Greystones seafront and bounds into the crashing waves, walkers can’t help but break into a smile at the sight of this lumbering golden bundle of joy.
Looking closer, they’re amazed to see Millie is in fact galloping along on just three legs.
But when Brenda Reilly tells the story of how a lost Millie defied death and against the odds, made her heroic journey home, they are left in awe at this miraculous pooch. It was early February when grandmother Brenda looked out the back bedroom window of her home in Corofin, Co. Clare, to see one last golden swish of Millie’s waggy tail, before she disappeared through the back fence and tore off into the field, chasing after a fox.
When there was no sign of her at the back door ten minutes later, Brenda panicked. ‘It was so out of character for Millie so I started ringing around all the family and neighbours and searched and searched,’ she says. Millie seemed to vanish into thin air.
That night Brenda set up a Facebook page, and walked the streets of Clare, calling out for Millie. But there was no sign.
The next day Brenda put up posters and upped her search. As news of Millie’s disappearance spread locally and on Facebook, reports rolled in about sightings.
Brenda drove hundreds of miles, dropping whatever she was doing, day or night, to follow up leads but they led to nothing.
As well as constantly posting pictures on the Find Millie Facebook page, a week later frantic Brenda sent up a private infrared drone from her garden to search the banks of the River Fergus. But there was no sign of her beloved four-year-old pet.
Almost a month later, Brenda’s worried partner gently urged her to think about letting Millie go.
On the weekend of the big snow, Brenda and her family were due to travel to Dublin for her grandson’s Christening but the weather put paid to that. So that Friday night, Brenda carried their Westie Freddie out into the garden in the snow.
‘I called out goodbye to Millie and her spirit,’ she says. ‘I offered her back to the universe and thanked her. I threw some of her favourite toys into the field where she vanished and wished her a safe journey to the next world.’
A friend had sent Brenda a poem about dogs crossing the rainbow bridge, which she also read during her goodbye ‘ritual’. The universe responded. That Sunday morning, Brenda looked out the back window and couldn’t believe her eyes.
‘There was snow everywhere and then I spotted this lump of gold in the snow in the garden,’ she says. I cried out, “Oh Tom, it’s Millie, she’s dead, she’s dead.” It was -3C. Then I saw her eyes look up and I knew she was still with us. I ran out to her and she gazed at me and I put a jumper over her. She’d no strength left. I thought this was her last gasp.’
Millie’s thin, badly-broken back leg was trapped in a strand of barbed wire and the bone was exposed. She was covered in sores and severely underweight. Somehow she’d managed to get home, with a broken leg, through the snow.
‘The wall is a big stony wall, around five foot and somehow she’d scrambled over it, with the stones tumbling on her and when she rolled over, she caught her broken leg in the barbed wire. The more she struggled the tighter it went. She staggered goodness knows how many miles home.’
Brenda and her partner gently undid the wire and took Millie to Summerhill Vets in Ennis.
Brenda continues: ‘We didn’t think she would make it. David the vet spent three hours on her.’
The vet said Millie probably broke her leg the day she vanished and thinks she may have been caught in a trap.
Brenda adds: ‘He said she may not make it through the night. Her organs may have already gone. She was at death’s door. She was skin and bones and gangrene had set in. She had a compound fracture on her back leg. Her teeth had worn down from where she tried to bite through the snare. She suffered so much.
‘I don’t know how she didn’t die. He put her on antibiotics and dressed her. He rang me at 9.30pm and said she was holding on. The wounds were horrific and her leg was wasted away and her muscle was gone so an amputation would be precarious.’
The vet then performed a full amputation of Millie’s back leg from her hip joint.
‘We were told she may die under the anaesthetic,’ Brenda recalls. ‘The vet brought in his own dog to give her a blood transfusion — he was so generous.’
The following Friday, Brenda brought Millie home and her road to recovery began.
‘We lay her in a bed in the kitchen she could barely move. Slowly she started to lurch from her bed area. I could see the determination. I fed her liver and heart, very rich food, to build her up. It took a week until I knew she’d make it.’
As news of Millie’s heroic homecoming spread on Facebook, the messages of support flooded in.
‘I believe she heard me calling out her name that night when I said called out goodbye to her. Somehow she’d come home through the snow. If we had gone to the Christening and came back on Sunday evening, we could have found her dead.
‘The vet said she was hours from death when we found her. She’s a hero. She has the heart and spirit of a lion.’