When Hanah Hueston, an animal control officer with Vermilion County Animal Shelter, was told about a husky wandering near a lake, she and her team immediately rushed to check it out. They arrived to find the sweet pup curled up on a dock jutting into the lake — and it was clear that she was terrified of being rescued.

“We were prepared to jump in the water to get her,” Hueston said in a video for The Dodo.

The husky, later named Mingo, ran to one end of the dock and found herself trapped between her rescuers and the water. As she peered behind her, it was clear she wasn’t sure which path she would rather take.

“We could tell that there was some obvious trauma,” Kathleen Orcutt, one of Mingo’s other rescuers, said in a video for The Dodo. “She didn’t want to be in this situation. And the closer I got to her, even as slow as I was going, she was looking around, looking for her exit route.”

Mingo was clearly looking for a way to get around her rescuer and off the dock, but she was much too scared to make that choice. Her rescuers were hoping and praying for Mingo not to jump into the water, because it was freezing cold that day, and they’d have no choice but to jump in after her.

There was no real time to gain Mingo’s trust. Her rescuers knew if she hadn’t been trapped on the dock, there was no way they’d ever have an opportunity to catch her. They took the chance they had and ran with it, and before long, Mingo was secured.

Once Mingo was safe in her rescuers’ care, they could finally get close enough to see that she had one blue eye and one brown eye. She was such a pretty girl who had been dealt a bad hand, and her rescuers took her back to the shelter, where she could hopefully begin to heal.

“She most likely lived her life outside, and her demeanor and her behavior showed us that she hasn’t had a whole lot of socialization,” Orcutt said.

Mingo was still very scared when she arrived at the shelter, and it was hard for her rescuers to get close to her. They gave her as much space and grace as possible, and hoped that eventually she would learn to trust them.

“We kind of just let her hang out and get used to the shelter and people the first few days,” Orcutt said.

Her rescuers used treats and light touches to try and win her over, but she really started to come out of her shell when she met other dogs. Her first friend was a little Chihuahua named Ralphie.

Without her rescuers, Mingo might never have made it off of that dock. Now, she’s thriving in her forever home and so grateful to the people who never gave up on her.

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Source: New York Post