Nanci - Punkadoodle

Two dogs arrived on a plane from Iran a couple of weeks ago and were brought to Toronto Animal Services South. They were flown over by a private rescuer/donor who had made arrangements with TAS to do their adoptions. I know some people will question the point of rescuing dogs from the Middle East when there are many closer at hand but dog rescue has never been just about efficiency. It's mostly about matters of the heart and if someone is walking down the street in Iran or Mexico or Thailand and meets a dog they feel compelled to save, who are we to question that impulse?

And I must say, if I met these two in a place which offered them little hope, I'd be pretty tempted to whisk them away with me on a plane as well.

From what I hear about Iran, the clerics there are against dog ownership.

From The Star, "Iran tries to make it illegal to own a dog":

“I would like to thank the honourable police and judges and all those who worked to arrest dog lovers and to confiscate short-legged dogs in this city,” cleric Gholamreza Hassani declared in the city of Urumiyeh.

“Happy are those who became martyrs and did not witness the playing with dogs! Now in our society, women wear hats and men hold dogs!” he added.

But that doesn't mean regular Iranians don't like dogs - and many do. Unfortunately, since it's almost getting to be illegal to walk a dog if you own one, a lot of dogs get "poached" or confiscated by the police if seen outside.

Word is that's how Nanci and Sepehr ended up being taken away from their owner and put in a zoo.

Granted, these two pooches do look pretty ridiculous. You walk up to Nanci and you'd expect to see something like this (care of Photoshop):

Okay, so that's not anything out of the normal but Nanci doesn't look like that. She looks like this:

Her legs are like less than half the length of any self-respecting "normal" dog - not that she seems to notice her deficiency. Nanci seems perfectly happy and perfectly fit. She seems totally oblivious to the fact that when she walks she has to move her legs twice as fast to keep up and looks like one of those cartoon dogs with the blurry, shuffling feet.

No one's quite sure what Nanci is so I'm going to call her a Punkadoodle.

She's a quiet, gentle girl with happy eyes and she loves human attention.

If I wanted to be stopped every ten seconds, everywhere I went, by people wanting to meet my dog, I'd get Nanci but Nanci isn't being adopted out on her own. She's being adopted out with her best pal Sepehr who is equally odd looking and that means not double but quadruple the fun because fun with dogs increases exponentially with number.

Post on Sepehr coming up.

The best way to check on the adoption status of this dog (and other dogs and cats and other small domestic animals) is to visit Toronto Animal Services adoption website or call 416 338 6668 for the Toronto Animal Services South shelter. If the dog is no longer on the TAS adoption website, it's probably because it's been adopted already.