One late February Friday morning, a sanitation worker in Lancaster, Ohio, was making a regular pick up at the dumpster behind the local Rooster’s restaurant when he made an unexpected discovery.
Just before the truck lift was set to dump and crush the trash inside the dumpster, the sanitation worker noticed a small dog struggling to escape the debris. Thinking quickly, the worker lowered the lift to retrieve the frightened dog. He jumped out of the truck and sifted through the dumpster, scooping the dog, a black-and-tan Dachshund, safely into his arms. The little Doxie was shaking, so the sanitation worker rushed him into the restaurant for help.
“We brought him inside, and I got him one of our Rooster’s T-shirts and wrapped him up, just because he was shivering and scared,” Rooster’s manager on duty Dusti Thompson-Wears tells 10tv.com.
Fellow Rooster’s manager Jennifer Green tells the Bucyrus Telegraph Forum that the dog was “sweet and cuddly,” that he was in good shape despite all he’d been through.
“He definitely seemed like someone owned him; he wasn’t scraggly or anything,” Green says.
Rooster’s workers all acknowledged how lucky the dog is to be alive.
“All I could think about was had the sanitation worker not found the dog, or saw the dog moving,” adds Rooster’s employee Jena Gilbert.
While most of the Rooster’s crew doted on the Doxie, another worker contacted the Fairfield Area Humane Society, who came to pick up the dog a short time later. They decided to call the little guy Dusty, after the kind Rooster’s manager, Dusti Thompson-Wears.
Dusty is in good shape and is estimated to be between 3 and 4 years old.
“Very sweet little dog,” Humane Society Humane Agent Bill Huffman says of Dusty. “I think he’s missing his home right now, he’s a little whiny. But he’s had a rough morning, so I can’t really blame him.”
Humane Society staff has since determined the dog had to have been placed in that dumpster intentionally — after all, a Dachshund is too small to climb that high by himself. Though the restaurant does have surveillance cameras, unfortunately none of them captured the person responsible. Anyone with information about how Dusty got into that dumpster in the first place is asked to contact the Fairfield Area Humane Society.
Sources: Fairfield Area Humane Society Facebook page, 10tv.com, Bucyrus Telegraph Forum
