A poor pooch who miraculously survived being thrown from a truck at 50mph has finally found happiness and learned to wag her tail again.
Freya the terrier has found a loving family after her brutal abandonment in January, when she was thrown out of a moving vehicle and left by the side of the by her owner.
Passers-by who saw the incident in Yalding in the Kent countryside rushed Freya to a nearby vet, who reported the incident to the RSPCA.
The 18-month-old dog was found to be frightened, underweight, suffering from fleas and lucky to be alive.
Heartbreakingly, the number of animals being dumped is on the rise nationally with a 17 per cent increase from 2020 to 2021 and a 24 per cent increase this year, the RSPCA said.
After being treated by vets, Gill and her husband Ray who live in nearby Maidstone, but did not want the last named made public, welcomed Freya with open arms.
Gill said: “Freya is really happy here and is always wagging her tail.”
Inspector Kirsten Ormerod, who launched an investigation into the incident, said the canine was lucky to survive being thrown from the truck.
She added: “Witnesses described her being thrown with such force that she landed on the opposite side of the road, and the vehicle didn’t stop or even slow down.
“Freya is incredibly lucky to survive after being hurled from the moving vehicle at such a high speed, and vets were incredibly concerned that she may have suffered internal bleeding so performed surgery immediately.”
After surgery the rescuers were amazed to find the sandy coloured terrier was not seriously hurt.
Gill was heartbroken when she heard the dog’s sad tale and instantly looked into rescuing Freya.
She said: “I lost my Jack Russell terrier in April and we’d been thinking about getting another dog. I was so sad to hear about what had happened to Freya and thought we could give her a wonderful home but assumed she’d be snapped up.
“When my daughter sent me her profile on the RSPCA website I fell in love with her straight away – but I didn’t realise that she was the same dog until I read her story in the Downs Mail and recognised her!”
Gill added: “She can be a bit naughty and play bites a lot but we love her just the way she is.
“We have a trainer coming to help us as she is very scared around men and finds it difficult meeting other dogs.
“But she’s been through so much that we know it’ll take her some time to understand that she’s safe now.”
The 18-month-old Freya is just one of many cases the RSPCA has dealt with over the last year.
In 2021 alone, the charity received 1,081,018 calls to its cruelty line. 38,087 of these were about abandoned dogs, this being more than 100 vulnerable animals each day.
In that same year, RSPCA figures show that 92,244 dogs were reported as being victims of cruelty – a staggering 253 a day and more than ten an hour.
This marks a huge 16 per cent increase since 2020, the RSPCA said.
The charity receives around 90,000 calls to its cruelty line each month and investigates 6,000 reports of deliberate animal cruelty.
Yet this summer, the number of calls has risen to 134,000 a month, with reports of cruelty soaring to 7,000 monthly.
A total of 38,087 abandonment reports were made to the charity’s cruelty line last year – an average of over 3,000 reports a month, 104 a day or four abandoned animals every hour.
For more information and to support the charity visit: www.rspca.org.uk/stopcruelty.
