An abandoned dog has captured the hearts of millions with her heartbreaking story.
Meet Maru, a sweet, loveable Bull Mastiff who was determined to be reunited with her owners at all costs. Unfortunately for the precious girl, her owners didn’t share her love.
Maru started her life out pleasantly enough. She was born and raised in the kennels of an adoring, responsible breeder in Novosibirsk, Russia. The dog’s breeder, Alla Morozova, raised Maru to 5-months-old when she put her up for adoption. A couple in Krasnoyarsk, nearly 400 miles away, was lucky enough to take her home.
Sadly, 6 months later, Alla received a call from the couple saying they didn’t want to keep the dog after all.
The couple had been with the dog for half a year before deciding that they were “allergic” to Maru. As per Alla’s contract, the couple gave her a call to ask her to take Maru back.
“I never give up my puppies and when a dog is bought, it is stipulated that the owners should inform me if they do not need a dog anymore,” explains Alla to the Siberian Times.
While Alla was heartbroken for Maru, she wanted to bring her back until she could find her the right forever family. The breeder made arrangements with the couple to have her brought back by train for the long trip back to the kennels.
Unwilling even to make the journey with her, the couple hired out someone to “chaperone” the dog back to Novosibirsk. The attendant was supposed to care for Maru on the long train ride and make sure her needs were met.
Unfortunately for everyone, they underestimated the dog’s devotion to her adopters.
In order to reach Novosibirsk from Krasnoyarsk, the train has to travel through hundreds of miles of the Russian taiga. A vast wilderness covered in thick, old-growth forest that borders the subarctic circle.
Such forest can only be found in a handful of places in the world, and are still thickly populated with bears, mountain lions, wolves, and all other manner of wildlife. This is to say nothing of the dangers of the mountainous terrain itself.
Sad as it was, the ride was going fine until the dog began to wonder where her owners were.
Around 125 miles into the train trip, Maru was struck with a panic attack.
“The dog had a panic attack, she was frightened,She had been brought by her owners, then they disappeared somewhere. The noise of the train scared her…” Alla says.
At this point, the dog’s panic became unbearable. She was going to find her owners, and nothing was going to stop her.
“The dog jumped on the compartment door, kicked the handle to open it, and almost threw the conductor out of the way. She jumped out like a bullet. When the door opened to the platform, she jumped out into the night, into the taiga,” Alla relays what Maru’s chaperone had said.
Maru’s “attendant” says he yelled for the dog to come back, but the stop was short and before he knew it the train was moving again.
Not knowing what else to do, he called the owners to give them the bad news. In turn, they called Alla to let her know the dog simply wouldn’t be showing up. They explained what happened, and were basically planning to leave it at that. Alla asked the couple to go search for Maru at the Achinsk station where she had fled the train and, unbelievably, they actually refused her!
“That angered me. The owners were not upset at all, like, well, the dog is lost and that’s all right. That was their answer. They gave the dog away and the load fell off their shoulders,” Alla fumed.
In the meantime, Maru was on her own journey through the cold and terrifying taiga.
Frantic with worry, Alla hit the streets with a stack of flyers, passing them out and posting them wherever she could to find her dog. She spread the word everywhere she went, and two days later it finally paid off.
Maru had finally been found, all the way back in Krasnoyarsk’s industrial area, near where her parents lived.
“She had walked and run for two and a half days. Luckily neither bears ate her, nor wolves chewed her up. Volunteers found her in an industrial zone. The dog was very tired. She was lame, her paws were broken. The pads were damaged. Her muzzle was broken. Maru fell from the railway embankment. The volunteers who found her claim that she was ‘even in tears’” explains Alla.
While Alla has no doubts that Maru traveled back to Krasnoyarsk to find her owners, she was still in awe over the dog’s amazing sense of navigation.
“I’m sure that she was looking for her house. Dogs are very attached to people. She did not run to Novosibirsk, she wanted to go back where she lived. It is surprising that she went the right way. Geographically, she had no reference points at all. In the city she used to walk only in the yard, she never went anywhere else. And to make her away through the wild taiga, it is an amazing case,” she says.
To Alla’s immense gratitude, her friend Alyona Makhova volunteered to personally drive the heartbroken dog back to her first home in Novosibirsk. While she was sad and hurt by her owner’s rejecting her a second time, there was one good thing that came of it.
Maru got to be reunited with her dog parents again!
Based on Maru’s reaction, the sweet dog’s mother and father were a welcome sight to the incredible girl. She was ecstatic to greet them when she arrived in Novosibirsk.
Alla plans to keep Maru until she has fully recovered from the trauma of being abandoned, then rejected after traveling all that way alone through the forest. She is also determined to make sure that the next family she adopts Maru out to will be her forever family.
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Source: Siberian Times
