All we know about Zosia’s past is that, about a week ago, someone discovered near some train tracks in Jacksonville, Florida, with one leg completely severed and the other barely hanging on.
Rescuers surmised that the she was a stray, who was hit by a train — and then laid there, until someone found her, and called animal control.
This is what she looked like when the officers arrived, to save her.
Jen Deane, founder of the Jacksonville-based rescue group Pit Sisters, saw the photo, and “knew instantly that we needed to help her.”
For the last week, Zosia’s been at the shelter, recovering from surgery to fix up her hindquarters.
She’s displayed a sweet, gentle personality — even showed some kindly interest in a shelter cat — and staff and volunteers at the shelter “all love on her every day,” says Jen.
“We do absolutely everything we can,” Jim Crosby, chief of Jacksonville’s Animal Control and Protective Services, tells us. “My team doesn’t give up.”
On Monday, assuming she’s stable enough, Zosia will be taken to Pit Sisters’ veterinary clinic, where she will get more treatment (and more love).
She’ll get a custom wheelchair, donated by a Pit Sisters supporter, after which she’ll go into a foster home.
And then she will start the next chapter of what promises to be a quite wonderful new life.
Jen has ambitions that Zosia will perhaps become a therapy dog. She’s got the personality for it. She’s got the kind of background that’d give comfort to folks going through their own rough spell.
She believes that Zosia will prove to be a model of resilience, and goodness. One who proves that it’s so possible, and so worthwhile, to change a dog’s life entirely.
“She survived being hit by a train for a reason, and we believe it is to inspire others to help special needs dogs,” says Jen. “She is the sweetest dog we have ever met, and we have met lots of dogs.