We love her so much, please help us! TL;DR? Right now, we are looking at getting a prosthetic limb, and we are asking the internet to help us out a little, because Wendy has had a rough enough go of things, and she deserves something to be easy for once.

Meet Wendy (Gwendolyn Cookie): A Love Story on Three Legs

The Origin Story

Wendy was found in Eastern Washington behind a butcher shop. The butcher shop, where Wendy set up camp usually put something on the scraps out back to keep animals away. One week, nobody got around to it. Wendy showed up immediately to enjoy what she considered a complimentary buffet. Just a mama doing what she had to do.

We don't know exactly what happened to her right rear leg. The leading theory, somehow both horrible and completely on brand for Wendy, is that she got her foot caught in a trap or badly injured, and this absolute unit of a mother may have chewed off her own foot to free herself so she could get back to living.

She was found with three babies and one fewer leg than she started with, having kept all of them alive through a Pacific Northwest winter, in the wild, alone.

We're not saying Wendy is a superhero. We're just saying no one has proven she isn't.

Who Wendy Is Now That She Has a Couch, and 4 Beds

Here is the thing about Wendy: now that she is safe and loved, she is the sweetest, goofiest, most lovable creature on the planet. She takes every single one of her toys to her bed every night. Every. One. She loves lick mats, kongs, peanut butter, and dog puzzles.

She loves her humans completely and without reservation, which, given what humans put her through, is honestly a level of grace most of us will never achieve.

The Part About the Leg

Right now, Wendy sometimes uses her residual limb like a tiny peg leg, which is both adorable and a problem we need to solve.

When a large dog compensates for a missing limb without support, the other three legs start absorbing stress they were never designed to handle on their own. For a big breed like a German Shepherd, that quietly causes joint damage, spinal problems, and arthritis that gets harder and more painful to manage the longer it goes on. A proper prosthetic would fix her gait, protect her healthy joints, and give her body a real shot at staying healthy for the long haul. The sooner she gets one, the less damage builds up, and the more years she gets of actually living well instead of just getting by.

She has already done so much just getting by. We want better than that for her.

One More Thank You

None of this would exist without the extraordinary people at WA German Shepherd Rescue, who found Wendy, loved her, and made sure this stubborn, brilliant, three-legged miracle made it to a home that would fight for her. They do incredible work, and they saw exactly who Wendy was from the very beginning. Honestly, same. Please go show them some love.

Wendy spent a long time making sure everyone else was okay before she let anyone take care of her. She kept her babies fed and warm and safe against every odd imaginable, on three legs, in the cold, completely alone.

She just needed someone to finally show up for her.

We love her so much it's actually ridiculous.

To support Wendy's her prosthetic fund, every share helps. Every kind word gets read aloud to her, even though she will probably not look up from her very comfortable bed.