10/2022 Our beautiful blue tick beagle lost her life this week and went over the rainbow bridge. Her life did not start out too well and we had a lot brighter hope for her future than the reality of it.
She was a throw away from a hunter. Destiny was young at 10 months of age. She made a terrible hunting dog and her owner, a hunter, had had it. He threw her into the back of a pickup truck to get rid of her. Our rescue partners in Mississippi jumped in and saved her. She was a baby and terrified! What’s worse, she had heartworms. She went through treatment and barely moved out of one spot all day and all night.
She then made the journey to us. I have a soft spot for the scared ones. I so wanted to help her. But help her, I could not. It was too overwhelming at Beagletopia. She made zero progress under my care. It hurt me to see her so scared. Destiny was by far the most feral dog we have ever had in over 15 years in rescue. She had zero skills to deal with humans, to deal with a home, or to deal with everything new. It hurt to admit, I was not going to be able to help her but I knew who possibly could.
I reached out to one of my fosters that had a special skill set in dealing with the extremely shut down dogs. She was calm and had a calm home. She had brought many skittish dogs back to life and trust. If anyone could help Destiny, she could.
I knew what a challenge this was. I could not even get near Destiny unless forced and then she would defecate and urinate all over me and whatever was around. When we finished up her heartworm treatment and finalized with the final test, it still showed positive, so we had to extend treatment. Unfortunately, that kept happening. Her having to still deal with treatment was delaying her progress emotionally. But what could we do, we had to treat the heartworms.
She was making progress though. I was thrilled. It was baby steps but it was moving in the right direction. I could start to see a light. Over the course of many months, Destiny improved a tiny bit. Although it took one year, she also finally was negative for heartworms. It seemed like all was as it should be and we were doing pretty good.
Destiny was able to be brought in public out of her comfort zone even if she held it against foster mommy for a short time and inch her forward even more. Finally we felt she was at a point where she could go to training to build confidence. Mind you, she was still very afraid, but from where she had started, it was an amazing amount of success so far. We enrolled her in a program.
The week when she went to training, a horrific accident happened. Destiny 
ended up loose at the facility. Inside their contained facility fencing, she found a gap and went under the fence. She ran down the small road and entered a busy street where she was hit by a car and killed.
As you can imagine, as horrified as you are reading it, living it and being notified of it, was incredibly painful for us all. We are so sorry she never got her happy ending. I am grateful to the foster that taught Destiny about love and what a home could look like. Destiny would give her foster mommy kisses and ask her for pets. Thank you for giving her the love she needed to start to heal. I am so glad she trusted you enough to accept your love. I concentrate on that instead of the tragedy. Rest in peace and unafraid over the rainbow bridge Destiny.