Woman Finds Stray Dog on Beach but It Keeps Burying Food, Then She Realizes Sad Truth Why
No one would ever doubt that Megan Rose, a Texas transplant to New York, loves canines. “I just want to love Jesus and take naps and pet dogs,” she wrote on her Instagram page.
But even this inveterate dog lover never imagined what would await her when she and her boyfriend took a trip to the Dominican Republic. The couple visits the small island nation every year, but their 2017 trip was different.
“About 20 minutes in (to our trip), we’re, like, walking on the beach, and I was like … ‘I bet there’s a dog over there,’” Rose said. “And (my boyfriend) was like, ‘Don’t go over there, this is not why we’re here.’”
Rose, though, decided to check out the animal and discovered a short-hair dog with black and white markings. Her first introduction to the pup she would come to call Rhumba was marked by some strange behavior.
She could tell that Rhumba was extremely hungry and thirsty. So she and her boyfriend went to a buffet, picked out some hot dogs, cut them up, and scattered them on the sand in front of the dog.
You’d think that Rhumba would’ve pounced on them, right? Only the dog did nothing of the sort.
“She would pick one up and go bury it 10 feet away,” Rose explained. “She’d come back, pick up another, bury it 15 feet away.
“And then she would come back and lay down next to us.” When Rose realized why Rhumba was behaving so oddly, the sad truth of the situation broke her heart.
Rhumba wasn’t burying food because she wasn’t hungry. Quite the opposite: She was burying it in case she couldn’t find more later.
“I started crying, and we were like, ‘OK, this is it. We have to figure out how to get her out of here.’”
Rose originally planned to ship Rhumba to New York and find a foster home for her, and thanks to the help of a local shelter, she got her to the United States. But her plan fell apart as soon as Rhumba got out of the shipping crate.
“We opened the crate, and Rhumba jumped out and peed all over me,” she recalled. “I’ve never been more excited to be peed on.”
The couple already had two dogs, yet they made the decision to keep Rhumba. Rose knows it was the right choice.
“I thought that my capacity for love for a dog was capped … And then I met her, and it’s on this whole other level. There’s no cap when it comes to these creatures.”
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