Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
THE BIG SATURDAY READ:
MAGGIE the dog had grown used to being target practice. Vets think she was shot more than 70 times throughout her life – she is also blind and missing an ear. But the mongrel destined for a short, grim life was rescued from the streets of Beirut, Lebanon, and rehomed in the UK in 2018. Now, she lives with her new owner, Kasey Carlin, and is doing so well she helps others as a therapy dog. In an exclusive extract from Kasey’s book, this is the story of how Maggie’s incredible spirit never faltered.
It’s a scorching day in Beirut and a scruffy blonde dog is lying with her head hanging low, chained to a wire crate. Her stomach is bloated due to the puppies she’s expecting and she can’t move to forage for food.
She relies on the man she can hear walking about to ensure she doesn’t starve. To make matters worse, she has no idea where she is.
Her eyes, once a beautiful autumnal shade of orangey brown, are now completely closed, glued together by the infection that has ravaged them.
At some point, her jaw was broken and her left ear has been savagely removed, leaving a misshapen patch of fur-covered cartilage.
If you stroked her, you would feel some of the tiny bullets that are still lodged inside of her.
In Lebanon, it’s normal to see a dog in a bad state. But Maggie was provided a lifeline by a man called Hussein, who runs a dog shelter in the countryside outside Beirut.
He got a call from a friend, saying he’d found a dog who had been severely mistreated and was in desperate need of help.
She was horrifically injured, starving and pregnant. Hussein didn’t think twice. He went out to pick her up immediately and took her back to his shelter.
He couldn’t be sure what had happened to her, but feeling her rough fur riddled with tiny lumps and bumps, the most likely situation, then, was that this poor creature had been attacked at random and shot at by strangers.
She was terrified and skittish on the way back to Hussein’s shelter, and was agitated by being around people, because of the intense trauma she had suffered.
Hussein put a chain on her to stop her running away and was determined to keep hold of her until she got the help she needed and a new home.
But already he was faced with a terrible decision. He knew that when the dog gave birth, no one would want to take on the puppies.
So he made the kindest decision he could – to terminate the pregnancy. Those poor little pups would have had no hope. When her pregnancy was terminated, she was also neutered for her own safety and wellbeing.
The poor creature’s eyes were still open when she arrived at the rescue centre, but they were essentially just cavities. So Hussein took her to the vet, where she was given antibiotics to clear up the infection that had ravaged her eye sockets.
He knew that her eyes would have to be closed permanently at a later date. But Hussein also knew the cost