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PERRY BACKUS/Ravalli Republic
Eighteen-month-old Cormac Hildebrand offers his family's Great Pyrenees named Lena a little love.
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PERRY BACKUS/Ravalli Republic
Jennifer Hildebrand and her children, Cormac and Ella, gather around the Great Pyrennes they adopted recently. They named the new addition to their family, Lena.
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By PERRY BACKUS - Ravalli Republic
Sometimes we need a second chance.
The tiny puppy dropped off last June at the Salt Lake Center shelter must have been hoping for just that.
The four-month-old dog had an infected three-inch-deep open wound all the way around her neck. A veterinarian later guessed the dog had been tied up since she was weaned with a wire around her neck. She was infested with fleas and emaciated.
The dog's owner said she had been caught in a bear trap.
Jennifer Hildebrand remembers hearing about the puppy.
"It was a horror story," she said. "That bear trap story was a lie."
She and her husband have been adopting large-sized rescue dogs for several years now. They already had two St. Bernard's and a Newfoundland at their Frenchtown home.
"We decided we could take one more," she said.
The couple adopted the puppy through the Great Pyrenees Rescue of Montana last June, after it went through a bout of surgery to repair its neck and a few days of quarantine for a bout of parvovirus.
"My 9-year-old daughter Ella took care of her right from the beginning," Hildebrand said. "We had to keep her in the garage at first as part of the quarantine. Ella would get up three or four times a night with her bucket and scrub brush to clean up her pen."
Before each night was over, Ella had pulled down her sleeping bag and would sleep with the family's newest addition.
"To this day, they still sleep together," Hildebrand said. "Lena has become part of our family."
The Hildebrands have always turned to organizations like the Great Pyrenees Rescue of Montana to find animals in need of a new home.
Carol Long of Hamilton volunteers for the Lavina-based organization.
"Great Pyrenees are a lovely breed," Long said. "They are bred to be guard dogs, but they can also make wonderful family pets. People just need to take the time to understand them."
The Montana rescue organization serves Wyoming, Utah and Idaho and has worked to find homes for Great Pyrenees from as far away as Texas.
People interested in adopting a dog are required to fill out an application and have a property with a good fence around it.
"They can be big wanderers without a fence to keep them in check," Long said.
People considering adopting a Great Pyrenees also should realize there's a reason for that word "great" in their name.
"They do get big," Long said. "A small female might weight 80 pounds. A larger dog could easily hit 120 pounds."
A lot of people would never consider adopting a large dog, Hildebrand said. They often don't live as long as smaller breeds. They eat more. They can have medical problems.
But, most of all, they are just really big.
"I think sometimes people get one of the larger breeds when they are puppies and don't think about what they'll be when they grow up," Hildebrand said. "They are big fluff balls when they're tiny and when they get big, they decide they can't handle them."
Those who make the decision to give up on their dog really miss out on the best time of their lives.
"They really turn into big couch potatoes," she said. "Ours are just big bumps. They are all so mellow."
Adopting a pet from a shelter or a rescue operation is really the best way to go, Hildebrand said.
"In many cases, you end up with a dog that is past that puppy stage," she said. "The older dogs know their manners. Most of all, they know how lucky they are to be in a good home.
"You can look them in the eye and know that you've saved a life. I think everyone needs a pound puppy, or maybe two or three."
Anyone interested in learning more about the Great Pyrenees Rescue of Montana organization can call Long at 375-0719.
Reach reporter Perry Backus at 363-3300 or
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