She was only eight months old, a cinnamon-colored pup tied to a sun-bleached hydrant with a leash knotted tight as a fist. Someone had left a plastic tub of food and a small jug of water nearby—evidence of a goodbye that tried to look like care—but the puppy wouldn’t touch any of it. She stayed curled into herself, a small comma of fear on a busy Southern California corner, letting the day pass around her.
When Suzette Hall heard the call, her heart sank in that familiar way rescuers know too well. As the founder of Logan’s Legacy, she’d already peeled too many frightened dogs off that same street. Another family’s promise broken. Another life waiting for someone to mean “forever.”
Hall wanted to jump in her car and go, but distance was against her. So she did the next best thing: she phoned a neighbor she trusted—someone who lived close enough to catch the moment before it slipped away.
“Please go,” Hall urged over the line. “She’s scared. She’s confused. She needs you now.”
Minutes later, the neighbor pulled up and saw exactly what Hall had feared: a puppy later named Cici, tangled from twisting and twisting in circles, the leash looped so tight she could hardly turn her head. When the woman knelt, Cici’s low growl trembled in the air—more plea than threat, the sound of a baby who didn’t know which humans to believe anymore.
On speakerphone, Hall coached each movement like a field surgeon: slow hands, soft voice, no sudden shadows. The woman murmured comfort and let the silence do the rest. When Cici finally went still, the neighbor eased the leash free and wrapped the puppy in a blanket warm from the car. For a heartbeat Cici simply melted—weightless, exhausted—before being lifted into the passenger seat.
The rescue didn’t end there. Fear and hunger have a way of catching up. Halfway to the clinic, Cici’s body faltered. She grew weak, then sicker, her stomach rejecting what little she had left to give. The neighbor kept driving. Hall stayed on the phone, calm and steady. Sometimes love has to borrow nerves from farther down the road.
They made it to Camino Pet Hospital just in time. Inside, hands that smelled of soap and kindness met them at the door. Fluids, warmth, quiet. No cages slammed, no voices raised. Just the soft choreography of people who understand that survival can be coaxed back, one steady breath at a time.
Then, almost like a switch had been flipped, Cici rallied. A spark returned to her eyes. Her ears pricked. She lifted her head when footsteps passed and sniffed the air the way puppies do when they’ve decided the world might not be all sharp edges after all.
Among her new friends, one stood out. Hedy Herold, Camino’s office manager, moved past Cici’s kennel a dozen times a day—and every time, that little tail started to wiggle like a metronome set to joy. Where other hands had failed her, Hedy’s became a safe harbor. Cici learned the weight of arms that didn’t let go. She learned that blankets could be memory foam for a new life.
Days later, cleared and brighter, Cici graduated from patient to foster-ready. The word “home” hung in the air like a promise. A temporary family waited on the other side of discharge papers, the first bridge between “abandoned” and “adopted,” between hydrant and hearth.
You can still see the old story if you look closely—the way Cici tucks herself into a tidy curl when she’s uncertain, the way her eyes search a room until they find the person who said her name last. But you can also see the new story writing itself in real time: curiosity returning, appetite waking up, the play-bow of a puppy daring a human to pretend they’re not already in love.
Rescue work asks impossible things of ordinary people: to stop their day, to reroute their plans, to drive toward the ache instead of away from it. On that sidewalk and in that small exam room, goodness conspired. A founder who wouldn’t ignore a plea. A neighbor who left her errands at the curb. Veterinary staff who run toward the fragile. And a puppy who, despite every reason not to, decided to trust one more time.
Now, as Cici heads to foster, Suzette Hall is already thinking ahead—past the first bath and the first toy she won’t surrender, past the first nap where she doesn’t wake at every sound. She’s thinking about the door that opens on adoption day, the click of a leash that means “let’s go home,” the kind of love that doesn’t need props to prove it tried.
It’s astonishing what a small life can carry and still be sweet. But that’s Cici: a soft, resilient heart wrapped in puppy fur, ready to trade a street corner for a couch, a hydrant for a sunny window, fear for belonging.
She’s ready. And she’s as sweet as can be.
