"Pretty smart move. He basically rescued himself"
Valia Orfanidou was driving down a rustic road in rural Greece when a little black and white puppies jumped out of the bushes and began running behind her car.
Orfanidou looked at him in the rearview mirror of the car, and he could see that the puppy was bending over and following her. “My thoughts were, ‘Oh no, another one,’” Orfanidou said. “Greece has about 3 to five million stray dogs. The streets here are like an open-admission shelter — anyone who doesn’t want their dog anymore dumps him on the streets, there's no other option.”
Orfanidou fosters and rescues dogs in Greece and details the experience on her blog The Orphan Pet. She knew she couldn’t leave him in the middle of nowhere. She stopped her car and tried to coax him inside.
“When I ended, he hid under the wheels of the car,” Orfanidou said. “Every time I approached he would hide, and once I moved back a couple of steps he’d begin of hiding and bark at me as if he was trying to mention something.” After about 10 minutes of playing hide-and-seek with the puppy, she was ready to grab him and place him in the backseat of the car, where he started wagging his tail happily.
Orfanidou brought him to a veterinarian for a checkup, and though the puppy had been surviving on whatever food he could find on the streets, he was surprisingly healthy. Now, during a loving family in Athens, the puppy, now named Bandit, is growing quickly with the right care. “He is independent and strong-minded,” Orfanidou said. “[But] very loyal and lives to find out .”
Bandit is eagerly learning about his new world — about soft beds, full food bowls, kind humans and long walks.
And soon, with the help of Second Chance Animal Rescue Society, he will find a forever family who will give him the love and a spotlight he so deserves.