Ravelry News Magazine

Layla’s Story – Unwanted at her for­mer home and now an all around joy for her new family.

 As we all know, we knit­ters have other pas­sions besides knit­ting and this story demon­strates the pow­er­ful com­mu­nity found on Rav­elry and what knit­ters can do.

Early in April 10, 2011, a Rav­eler, liv­ing near Mon­tréal Canada, searched the Rav­elry com­mu­nity and found the Ger­man Shep­herd Lovers Group (350 mem­bers strong) to see if some­one within the group could help her find a home for her 3 year old dog, Layla. Awe­some posted a pic­ture of her beau­ti­ful sweet girl and pro­ceeded to tell the group mem­bers about Layla. Awe­some was very con­cerned because her par­ents had decided that they wanted to give Layla away because she was too big and she shed. Awe­some was afraid, too, that Layla would end up in a cage at a shel­ter and worse that she would be euth­a­nized — a fate that often occurs quickly for “owner-turn-ins”.

Rav­el­ers from across Canada and the United States and as far away as the United King­dom and Israel fell in love with Layla and tried to find ways to help her. Over a cou­ple of days, sev­eral pro­pos­als were put together. A few group mem­bers who work with dog res­cue orga­ni­za­tions in the north­east­ern part of the US were work­ing to orga­nize relays of dri­vers to trans­port Layla from Que­bec to res­cues in the States. There were issues, of course, about trans­fer­ring a dog from one coun­try to the next, but group mem­bers were offer­ing to donate to the cause of get­ting Layla some­where where she could be looked after and help to find the right for­ever home for her. The Cana­di­ans, too, were work­ing their net­works and sup­ply­ing Awe­some with con­tacts both locally and across their great nation. It was amaz­ing to watch the thread grow and read the sto­ries as well as look­ing at the links the mem­bers pro­vided about res­cue organizations.

Then, Alex — just three days after Awe­some had made her first post — wrote that she had a friend, David Shama, who owns The Orig­i­nal Dog House Inc (a Dog Cen­tre) in Toronto. As a dog lover, David also pro­vides fos­ter homes for Ger­man Shep­herds and finds them good adop­tion homes. Eight days after Awe­some had first writ­ten her request for help, David was able to arrange trans­port for Layla from Awesome’s home to his facil­ity. This was not just a short drive across town, but a 6 plus hour jour­ney by car from the province of Que­bec to the province of Ontario. Within 3 weeks under David’s care and with his help in match­ing Layla to the right fam­ily, Layla’s adop­tive par­ents picked her up and she’s now in her lov­ing for­ever home.

Alex wrote a won­der­ful let­ter to the new par­ents that included these words:

“I just wanted you to know that Layla got to you due to the love of a lot of peo­ple first and fore­most the resource­ful young woman who couldn’t keep Layla but was deter­mined that she get the best of homes. Layla was loved in that home even if the young woman’s par­ents were not respon­si­ble dog own­ers. This young woman has since become a mem­ber of our group because she is a lover of GSDs. One of the mem­bers referred to “our Layla” in a post where she expressed how the story of what we were able to do for Layla helped her cope with the recent loss of her beloved GSD.”

And, since then, both of Layla’s new par­ents have joined Rav­elry and the Ger­man Shep­herd Lovers Group not only to keep Layla’s new found friends informed about her life, but also to take part in the great com­mu­nity of knit­ters (Kathybo is a crafter, too!). They have been able to cor­re­spond with Awe­some to ask her some basic ques­tions as well as some not so basic as Layla knew com­mands in French and nei­ther Wolf­man nor Kathybo speak the lan­guage fluently!

Knit­ters, you are strong and car­ing and can move moun­tains (and some­times dogs) when you try. This is also an oppor­tu­nity for you to under­stand the strength within the Rav­elry com­mu­nity. Awe­some took the time to search the Rav­elry com­mu­nity and she and the Ger­man Shep­herd Lovers Group came together and saved a dog’s life.

This is not ‘The End’ it is only ‘The Begin­ning’ for Layla.