Cryptozoology Online: Daily News: Pit bull rescues blind cocker .

Volunteer Alan Borland's daily walk with Nala, a pitbull-lab mix from the Humanist Society of Redmond, took a strange turn early this month. The usually well-behaved Nala began looking south and pulling - hard. "This is the 1st time she ever refused to stop pulling," says Borland, 55, a retired policeman. " I finally gave in and let her pull me into a ditch. It's a mysterious and brushy, about 4 feet thick and 15 feet across.

What they found at the rear was a dark and white ball of fur curled up, with baseball-sized balls of snow covering his feet. "I view it was dead at first," says Borland, who directly knew it was a dog. "As I set down I saw it was breathing, but it didn't move." Borland sought assistance from the Humane Society and its veterinary facility, just 200 yards away. And then, an incredible realization. The dog, a 10-year old blind and largely deaf Cocker Spaniel, had been a resident of the shelter. The month before, a woman with a soft spot for disabled animals adopted him. Named Chadwick, he moved two miles from the protection but wandered off and traveled for a week through miles of hard snow back to the Humane Society. "I was pretty surprised," says Chris Bauersfeld, the shelter's manager. "We knew that Chadwick was lost, but we never expected him to do his way back here. I believe he heard the other dogs barking and his bearings took him this way." Did Nala, a shelter resident since April, recognize the odour of her former shelter neighbor? "Several dogs walked by that morning on their morning walk and didn't alert to him at all," says Bauersfeld. "On a casual basis, these dogs do something that makes me just bear in awe." Once Chadwick was rehydrated and warmed up, his distraught owner - searching for him since he disappeared seven years before - picked the pup up. Bauersfeld does not recognize how Chadwick escaped from his new home. Nala, however, still needs a home. Great with humans, she doesn't get on with many other dogs. "Alot of other people have offered to take her," says Bauersfeld, "we haven't found the proper place for her." When Freekibble.com heard the floor they were so inspired by Nala's rescue they jumped in to donate 10,000 meals of Halo Spot's Stew to the Redmond Humane Society. "We just happen to be in a neighboring town, and when we heard of Nala rescuing this brave but scared little Cocker Spaniel, we wanted to serve out with a large contribution of safe food in Nala's honor," says Freekibble's Kelly Ausland. "She saved her friend, she's a hero!http://www.halopets.com/freekibble/donation8.php