When Carol Ritchie of Riverview, NB’s granddaughter traveled to Da Nang, Vietnam, to do some volunteer work, she worried she might never come home.
Ritchie said, “I was more concerned with her falling in love with a man or a companion, not an animal”.
But it turned out that her granddaughter, Sarah McLeod, also of Riverview, fell in puppy love.
While volunteering at an animal shelter serving animals with special needs called Paws for Compassion in central Vietnam, MacLeod, who has a degree in kinesiology, rather unexpectedly fell in love with a rescue pup named Captain. Which she is now trying to get back. Home to Canada.
“When I first met him he was not a dog that was super energetic and happy, he was kind of an old, grumpy shelter dog in the corner,” McLeod said.
After being hit by a car and abandoned by its owner, the street dog was rescued from the shelter where McLeod volunteered for three months. The captain, whose hind end was paralyzed, had to have a leg amputated along with his teeth and an eye gouged out.
After working in Canada to help people with disabilities back home, McLeod raised Captain in her apartment and lovingly nursed him back to good health.
She fell madly in love.
“She has such a newfound love for life that I want to be able to let her be happy the rest of her life,” she said.
Having the captain now use a wheelchair and driving him back home to New Brunswick, she says, will provide the eight-year-old pup a more comfortable life.
But it won’t be easy.
His grandmother, who is also an animal lover, said, “It will take a few rounds to bring him home.”
According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, McLeod must prove that he formally adopted Captain and that Captain must meet all medical and documentation requirements to become a Canadian K-9.
McLeod said her visa expired in Vietnam, so she is currently in the Philippines, but plans to return to Da Nang in March to take the captain to Canada to try and get everything in order.
“It costs an extra $400 per flight and if I can go back to New Brunswick, that’s three flights,” she said.
She is now trying to raise money for the trip.
Meanwhile, the Captain is temporarily back in the asylum before MacLeod hopes to have a happy reunion in the spring with the boy she met and fell in love with abroad and spends the rest of her life with him. Looking forward to spending time together.
“I think everybody in Canada is going to love him.”
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