Khaleesi

The Dog with the Unbreakable Spirit

I was going to do a social media post about Khaleesi but as I started writing it got a little too long so here’s an article on our brave new addition to the team.

Khaleesi was found abandoned and injured back in 2019 by Jo-Rosie and Nando outside a café in Spain where she’d been dumped and had lay there alone for 48 hours.

She was so terrified that Jo had to lift her into the van. Once they got home and got a good look at her they noticed her injuries were more severe than they first thought.

Despite consulting two separate vets who assured them that her old wounds weren't painful, they could clearly see she was hurting. It took Khaleesi two weeks to feel safe around their home but thankfully bonded with Jo-Rosie very quickly.

They found vet specialist to look at Khaleesi's legs. The X-rays confirmed the worst: her injuries were beyond repair.

A few months later, they noticed a change in her movement and consulted a different vet whose wife was a vet physio. This one agreed that Khaleesi was in significant pain and put her on anti-inflammatory medication and took another set of X-rays.

Khaleesi's mobility had worsened significantly over the two years since her rescue and the vet estimated her pain level at 9.5 out of 10. Arthritis had worsened, and both her shoulder and back leg were in bad shape.

It was a miracle that she was still functioning. The typical course of action for such injuries would be amputation, but with two injured limbs on the same side, that wasn't an option.

They were told that Khaleesi would spend her remaining 1-4 years on pain medication.

They vowed to make her as comfortable and happy as possible, aware that a time would come when medication wouldn't suffice.

Thanks to Jo-Rosie and Nando for saving her and for their tireless dedication and compassionate care that has led her to where she is today. Not only did they provide her with a safe and nurturing environment in their home, but they also spent countless hours building a relationship based on trust and mutual respect.

Their approach went beyond just meeting her basic needs, focussing on her emotional and psychological needs too, ensuring she could truly thrive and trust again.

Their journey with Khaleesi is testament to what can be achieved with compassion and dedication and proves that even the most broken spirits can be mended with the right support.

Everything happens for a reason.

If I hadn’t made several life decisions this year this wouldn’t have happened.

Whether this year has been a sequence of coincidences or maybe life conspiring to make things happen, this is how Khaleesi came to live us here in Scotland.

After years of hard work, continuous learning, and 000’s of success stories, I decided it was time to finally turn my dream into reality and launched my own dog behaviour business. Business was picking up quickly, but I got the opportunity to go over the Spain to house sit and do some light training with Jo-Rosie’s dogs, while she was in the UK for work. This was too good an opportunity to pass on.

Jo-Rosie, along with the team at the School of Canine Science (SOCS) had become heavily influential mentors in my continuing development as a dog behaviourist, and the chance to work with her dogs—Fiasco, Blake, Khaleesi, Hope, and Ella felt like both an honour and a unique learning experience and I jumped at the opportunity without a second thought.

I bonded with all the dogs from day one, but Khaleesi was the one I fell for most, her unbreakable spirit, even after what she had endured in her past, was heart-warming.

As anyone who’s met her will attest to, Khaleesi has a way of making you feel as if you’re the centre of her universe the moment she looks at you, as if you were the one that she's been waiting for.

When I (in a light-hearted manner) mentioned to Jo-Rosie that if Khaleesi ever needed a new home, that she should look no further than me, it was a promise I was fully prepared to keep (not thinking this would ever happen).

Even saying goodbye to the dogs (including Khaleesi) was difficult after just that one week in Spain, little did I realise I’d be seeing her again only a few months later.

And so, when life's circumstances made it so that Khaleesi needed a new home, a brave and heart-breaking decision for Jo-Rosie to make, but one that was in Khaleesi's best interest. I knew it was a promise I was going to keep.

Khaleesi is lighting up our home here in Scotland, blending perfectly with the VERY diverse personalities of our own three Border Collies—Calaidh, Bhruic, and Freya.

Khaleesi has found her forever home and has already, in such a short period of time, enriched our lives in ways we never imagined she could. She's such a special girl and will be forever loved by her new family.

Her unbreakable spirit reminds us that love, resilience, and kindness are some of the most powerful forces on earth.