Despite how terrible it was, this dog in Cairo took seriously his responsibility to protect a property. When humans came too close to the land he was defending, he did what all dogs do: he did what he had to do.
“He barked and they hacked his nose off,” Lauren Connelly of Special Needs Animal Rescue and Rehabilitation (SNARR) said.
That meant joblessness for the dog, who would later be called Anubis after the ancient Egyptian god of the underworld. So he wandered the city streets for years, frequently curled up under a vehicle, in quiet anguish.
Others, on the other hand, would become his voice. The Animal Protection Foundation, a local charity that cares for thousands of abused animals around the country, was the first.
After that, it was SNARR’s time.
“We’ve rescued hundreds of animals from them and brought them to the United States, animals that would otherwise be in pain in a country that can’t care for them,” said Connelly, a foster coordinator for the American organization.
Finally, a veritable army of volunteers established a relay of drivers from New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to Olney, Maryland, where Anubis stayed for a week before being transported through Tennessee and finally Fort Worth, Texas.
It may have seemed like Anubis’ own voyage to the underworld. Except at each stop, there was love. And, of course, there’s food. There is a lot of food.
Connelly explains, “He kind of eats upside down to compensate.” And his eventual destination, a long-term foster home in El Paso, Texas, is almost as good as it gets.
Anubis will stay with his foster family for up to six months. But, according to Connelly, they are “head over heals” in love with him, and they stand a good possibility of becoming his permanent family. Besides, he’s already infatuated with his new sister, a blind rescued dog.
Anubis is no longer a hound of the underworld after spending so many years living under vehicles on busy, hazardous streets. Now, he is a god of the sofa.
