ATLANTA — After Ashley Dunn watched a cellphone video from Istanbul, Turkey, she couldn't shake the images of the golden retriever pawing at the door.
“It felt like eternity thinking, This poor animal is out there in the woods, so desperate,'” Dunn said.
Adopt a Golden Atlanta has been working to rescue golden retrievers from Turkey like since January when they got a call from a woman worried about the dogs being abandoned.
"They have 32 shelters in Istanbul," Juliann Kaiser with Adopt a Golden said. "If there's room, the dog gets to go to the shelter. If not, the municipality puts it on the street or in the forest."
Dunn, a former vet tech, says life in the wild can be especially hard for goldens.
“Having to survive in a pack is very difficult for them because they don't really want to fight back,” Dunn said.
They say the local government spays and neuters the dogs, gives them shots and won't euthanize them even when there's no room.
“So when we expressed an interest in bringing the dogs over, the Turkish government was willing to work with us because they do really want a better life for the dogs,” Kaiser said.
“Adopt a Golden will never turn down a local dog so the fact that we're able to go outside of our region and help other dogs around the world is just amazing,” Dunn said.
Now the retriever Dunn watched run through the forest is bounding down her back steps in Milton, Georgia.
“We just want to make sure she gets some weight on her, she's very thin,” Dunn said. “She's malnourished, she's losing some fur from that and she has some skin conditions because she's obviously lived in damp conditions.”
Jitterbug, as she's now called, is adjusting to the new culture, ditching her jitters and jumping into her new life.