We’ve all met people that when faced with a homeless dog opt for the “I just can’t help right now, it’s not a good time” defense. Heck, most of us have used it as well. This isn’t what Tia Vargas did, however. Tia was climbing down the peak of Table Rock Train in the Grand Teton National Park when the hiker found an injured dog and saved him.
The peak is 11,000-foot high, but that didn’t stop the Idaho Falls woman. When she met a pack of hikers with ana struggling and limping English springer spaniel struggling she had to ask what was going on.
“They asked if he was mine and said that they’d seen a note at the bottom of the trail mentioning that somebody had lost their dog,” Vargas says. “The tag on his collar said his name was Boomer, and I could see that he was hurt. The other hikers wanted to get to the top of the mountain, so I decided right then, ‘OK, Boomer, I’ll help you.’”
Vargas realized that the dog was in such a bad shape that he couldn’t keep walking.
“His eyes were super puffy and bloodshot. His body was swollen, even his bum was very, very swollen,” she said “And you could tell he was very dehydrated. He had cuts and scratches on his belly and on his head. He was in bad condition.”
Vargas didn’t give it too much thought – she just lifted the dog on her shoulders and kept walking.
“I felt the difficulty of it right away. I never felt 55 pounds like that before,” she told Mother Nature Network. Fortunately, she soon met with Kasper, her father, with whom she was supposed to keep going.
“Dad laughed and said, ‘Isn’t this hike hard enough? You have to carry a dog too?’” Vargas said. “My dad makes me laugh. He is such a great man.”
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Through rain and rough terrain, the duo kept walking and managed to take Boomer to safety. There, they found his owners too – the dog was hiking with them when he fell and they couldn’t reach him. What’s more, because Boomer’s owners were set to move to Arizona, they offered Tia to adopt him. Tia ecstatically accepted and Boomer now has a new home with his savior.
“Boomer is part of our family now,” the amazing woman said. “I feel like there’s a reason why I was on the mountain at the very moment that he needed somebody to help. Both of us had a guardian angel that day.”
