Love at first sight can’t take hold of you in unexpected places. For firefighter and retired U.S. Army Sergeant Kyle Walker, the feeling overcame him on a winding road in Bosnia.
In August, Walker was visiting the country with his girlfriend Emily and spotted a “light golden-colored dog with a big beautiful tail limping on the side of the road.” Initially, Walker honked at the dog as he passed by to warn the canine not to get near the highway filled with speeding cars.
“When I beeped, the look on her face was devastating to me; she looked terrified and somehow looked directly at me,” Walker tells PEOPLE about the moment.
After locking eyes with the stray dog, Walker turned his rental car around to meet the canine up close. He decided that “saving this dog’s life was worth the risk of bites, or anything else,” and cautiously approached the pooch.
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“She looked at me with her head low and tail wagging. I knew we were going to be okay. I put my hand out, and she gave me a lick and stared at me,” he adds.
After forming a quick bond with the dog, Walker gave the pup some water and started thinking about how to get her away from the busy roadside.
“I had total trust in this dog, and I believe she had total trust in me. As we were there on the side of a highway with the occasional car passing by, there were prolonged moments of silence as we were both running through what was happening in our heads. Naturally, I started picking names, and Emily was saying there was no way we could pull this off,” Walker recalls.
Crediting the perseverance he developed in the Army National Guard, Walker says he decided not to give up on this injured, filthy, dehydrated stray dog. He wanted to get her back to his home in Fall River, Mass.
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“I felt so bad for her. I had to get her in the car; I could see the fleas everywhere,” Walker says of what happened next, adding, “I picked her up, and as I did, she looked up and gave me a lick under my chin and mouth. Now loaded up, Emily, Ginny, and I headed back to the town, not knowing what to do next.”
The trio ended up contacting Paws of War for help based on a recommendation from one of Walker’s friends, a fellow Army veteran. Paws of War is a nonprofit devoted to alleviating hardships for veterans and first responders through pets, including helping service members reunite with animals they rescued during their deployments. The organization responded quickly to Walker’s plea for help and said, “We can take care of you.”
Paws of War followed through with that promise by handling the complicated logistics of getting the dog vetted and prepared for a trip overseas and helping Walker raise funds to cover the journey. Walker has decided to name the former stray, now his beloved pet, Ginny.
“Paws of War has taken care of everything regarding getting Ginny safely to the U.S. They sent one of their veterans to go overseas to get Ginny and fly her home, landing at JFK on Oct. 5,” Walker says of Ginny’s trip.
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After Ginny received post-rescue medical care, she got a “clean bill of health” and became more magnetic and lovable than the day Walker met her.
“Ginny is a sweet-tempered and affectionate dog that I cannot wait to give an amazing life to. I knew from the moment she stared up at me on the side of the road that she was getting to America one way or another,” Walker says.
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“Ginny will have a fantastic life near the ocean in the summer, mountains in the fall, wood stove in the winter, and long walks in the spring. She will be visiting my fire station to see her dad at work and will be part of my growing family,” he adds.
The firefighter hopes that the devotion he and Paws of War have shown to Ginny inspires others to help an animal in need.
“I could have easily kept driving, made an excuse, “Oh, someone will come for her,” or taken the easy way out. Since doing what I did on the side of the highway in Bosnia, which went against every sense of sanity, I have felt more alive than ever,” Walker says.
To learn more about Paws of War’s mission to help Ginny, visit the organization’s fundraising page.
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