For one solitary dog, the view from the third floor must have been its own kind of agony.
However far she might have been able to see, Bella couldn’t dream of leaving this spot. Not with a thick, rusty chain around her neck. This squalid third-floor balcony in Cairo, Egypt, was all she ever knew.
Until she took a terrible chance and jumped.
Passersby heard her awful screech as the dog dangled helplessly from the balcony, the chain biting brutally into her neck.
Still, it almost took too long for help to arrive.
“She was over the balcony for about five hours we think,” Lauren Connelly of Special Needs Rescue and Rehabilitation (SNARR), a U.S.-based rescue group, tells The Dodo.
When someone finally got into the apartment and hauled her up, Bella was barely alive. The injuries to her neck were grievous. She was skeletally thin.
A local animal rescue, Egyptian Society for Mercy to Animals (ESMA), took her under its wing, getting her much-needed medical attention.
And, perhaps most importantly, they got Bella a lifeline – across the world to SNARR, which specializes in urgent, often difficult cases.
The two groups frequently coordinate rescues, matching dogs in desperate situations in Egypt with families in the U.S.
In May 2015, Bella flew farther than she ever could have imagined from her festering former balcony. A woman in Massachusetts had agreed to foster her. From there, she found her forever home.
Today, Bella, who is nearly 2 years old, lives in Houston, Texas. With a couple of humans. And a new doggy brother.
