CHAINED SHOT SAVED The unbreakable spirit of Maggie the Wunderdog

of ongoing surgery was going to pose a serious problem for him.

As dedicated as he was to his animals and his work, Hussein simply didn’t have the funds to carry on paying for vet bills. So he posted on several Facebook rescue groups to see if there was anyone better placed to help this creature.

His efforts paid off.

Maggie arrived in the UK in September, 2018, after a kind woman called Roxanna, who already has a rescue dog from Lebanon, raised enough money to bring her here.

Roxanna couldn’t adopt Maggie herself, but, with the help of animal welfare group Wild at Heart Foundation, they brought us together.

When I saw a picture of Maggie posted on the foundation’s Facebook page, my life changed for ever. And when it was finally time to bring her home, she was the total opposite of what I’d expected.

Bearing in mind her past, she was an astonishingly loving and trusting creature. All she wanted was affection. And the second I took her into my arms and cuddled her for the first time, I was in bits.

I couldn’t stop crying about how beautiful she was. She had this incredible warmth that seemed to radiate and swallow up everyone around her.

To me, she was perfection. As soon as I met her, it was like she was saying to me, “here I am. You’re going to love me”. I didn’t need any convincing. This was one of the most beautiful moments I had ever felt with an animal.

I couldn’t believe how well this poor, beaten, abused dog was taking everything in her stride. She had suffered so much for so long, but now she seemed just to accept her reality and go with whatever was happening.

There were moments where she could suddenly behave so much like a normal dog – like the first time I threw a ball for her.

At that moment, it truly struck me how, despite her blindness, despite her missing ear and her wonky jaw, Maggie really was just a normal dog.

She must have played like that in the past, prior to her injuries, and it was all still there within her.

I couldn’t help noticing more and more when I stroked her, I could feel tiny lumps and bumps that had probably been hidden by rolls of fat before.

There were three more occasions where I found little red dents in her skin. I still couldn’t get my head around what was going on. The marks always seemed to appear on the skinny bits of her – her front legs, her side, the side of her face and her neck.

I knew she still had occasional pain, especially around her front legs, and I began to wonder whether the marks were something to do with the injuries she had suffered in the past.

A few days after the marks appeared, little round pellets would appear on the floor next to her, as if out of nowhere.

I wondered if those little pellets could be ticks of some sort, as I was constantly checking her for them. But a darker possibility also crossed my mind – could they be the remnants of bullets, still lodged in her body from her traumatic experience in Lebanon?

From the day I took her in, Maggie