A puppy, but not the puppy Calli rescued.

Last summer, 9-year-old Calli Vanderaa found seven-week-old puppies in the garbage dumpster behind her house. In November, she wrote a letter to her local newspaper, the Winnipeg Free Press, detailing her rescue efforts.

Here is the letter:

Dear Sir
My name is Calli Vanderaa.
I’m 9 years old and I live with my daddy.
One day we found a little puppy in the BFI bin in our lane. Somebody had put 3 puppies in there and set them on fire.
Two of the puppies died but daddy and I saved one that was sitting in the corner crying.
We took her home and named her Jessie. She is happy and growing bigger every day.

When readers saw Calli’s story in the December 13 edition of the paper, offers started pouring in. Because Calli and her single father live in an inner-city neighborhood fraught with social issues, and because he is working hard to make ends meet, people pledged to donate gifts, cash, gift certificates, dog food and toys, and even babysitting.  What’s more, Habitat for Humanity emailed to say they could potentially help Calli’s father purchase a house with affordable payments in a safer neighbourhood. One man even offered him a job with better pay and less commute miles. And three kind strangers donated a total of $140 to pay for Jessie to be spayed, since Calli and her father don’t have the funds to do so.