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Back in April, Little Miss Roo Barb had come off a flight, freshly vaccinated, leaving behind the humidity of the tropical islands only to find herself weathering a snowstorm in Dover, New Hampshire.
Before she was Roo, she was one of about 30,000 dogs on Guam who roam free in the streets and in the jungle.
“She had been found basically wandering in the middle of the road alone. She had stomach parasites. She weighed eight pounds. You could see every single one of her ribs when they found her. She was in rough shape,” said Sydney, Roo’s owner.
Speaking from her home in New Hampshire through video call, the 24-year-old said she had been looking to get a dog for a while. Beside her, Roo is snuggled close, and quickly turned over for a belly rub as soon as she felt Sydney reach for her.
Sydney recently moved to a place that had more space for pets, when in March she came across a Facebook post about an organization looking to fly adorable stray dogs from Guam to the states to be adopted.
“Lauren, who's part of the Boonie Flight Project, her sister lives locally in New Hampshire. Someone that I've been friends with forever had shared a post that Lauren’s sister had posted, basically saying that they had found about 50 dogs in Guam. And that they were found in the streets and in the dumpsters and the jungle and everywhere else,” Sydney recalled.
Sydney contacted Lauren and Lauren happily sent Sydney about 15 photos of dogs that were up for adoption.
“As soon as I saw Roo, I just knew I had to have her,” Sydney said.
Roo was a tiny pup, four legs sitting underneath a generous set of ears.
“She looks like baby Yoda,” Sydney said.
It was a few weeks after picking out Roo that Sydney welcomed her home. There were several other people in New Hampshire who adopted boonies from that inaugural flight. The puppies would meet their new owners at a designated spot in the Dover area for the official hand-off.
“When they handed her to me, the woman that had gotten the van to drive everyone over she was like, ‘Honestly, she probably could have flown here herself with those ears,’” Sydney said.
Roo was the first of her group to meet her owner.
“I was the first one to get my dog and I walk up and they hand it to me. It was crazy,” Sydney said. “I looked at her and I was like, ‘Oh my god. What is this thing?’”
The puppy was up-to-date with her shots but she still had some patchy fur and had some weight to gain. Sydney purchased a small harness ahead of Roo’s arrival. Once she finally got to hold her, she knew the harness would be too big and Roo needed an extra-extra small harness.
In Sydney’s arms, the tiny pooch was bursting with energy.
“She was just so excited to be here, so unbelievably happy, she was just wiggling around in my arms trying to kiss me, kiss everyone there. She wanted to say hi to everyone. She was so excited to just be here. And she is just an absolute sweetheart,” Sydney said.
Once she got to her new home, she fell right asleep and slept through the night, only to wake up to something she’d never experienced on Guam.
“The next day we had a massive snowstorm. It was her first time seeing snow. She was just completely lost and cold and everything like that. And just like was so confused when she went outside,” Sydney said.
At this point, the puppy didn’t have a name. Sydney pondered what exactly to call her. They knew she looked liked Baby Yoda and they threw around a few different Baby Yoda-adjacent names. Sydney previously contemplated the name Isla, a nod to her island roots. But those names just didn’t quite fit.
“We were kind of trying to settle on something. Every single time you would see her she would just run up and she would get so excited. She would jump up and down on her back legs and just do this little dance,” Sydney said.
“I ended up bringing her out to my dad's house so that she can meet my dad's dog. My stepmom was like, ‘Why not Roo? She's like a little kangaroo.’”
Roo has since also picked up a new middle name, courtesy of Sydney’s roommate.
“I let my roommate pick her middle name, she picked Barb. So her full name is Roo Barb. When she's being naughty, she gets the full name,” Sydney said with a smile.
Roo Barb is full of energy. At about 11 months she’s been a happy puppy, adjusting to her new surroundings and her new community, which includes Sydney, her family, her roommates, and a cat and a kitten. Roo plays with Sydney’s dad’s dog, who has taken Roo under her wing. She’s a very social dog and, Sydney pointed out, Roo thinks she’s a little celebrity.
“Everyone's always like ‘oh my god, her ears.’ They're always asking me what kind of dog she is. I want to get a DNA test so bad, just figure out what kind of breed she was kind of mixed with,” she said.
“The vet’s always like, ‘We want to know what she is so whenever you want to do a DNA test let us know.’ Because they look at her and they see Chihuahua and German Shepherd right now. She is the size of a chihuahua but she looks like a German Shepherd.”
Roo has come so far—literally and figuratively—from where she was a few months ago. She now weighs 25 pounds and her coat has grown back.
“She is loving life,” Sydney said. “She wants to be a part of everything.”
Sydney has only high praise for the Boonie Flight Project. She said the process was easy and quick.
Every chance she gets, she tells interested adopters to check out the Boonie Flight Project.
“I just think that it's a great thing for everyone. It's so much cheaper than having to go out and spend so much money on this dog,” she said. “Just rescuing her (Roo), she cost so little to fly all the way from Guam….She was up to date on the shots when I got her and everything like that….So I really just had to pay to get her over here and get her fixed.”
Sydney said she’s had a great support system around her, friends and family all love Roo which means Roo’s support network has grown too.
“She's my little baby,” Sydney cooed.
“One thing that I can definitely say is, she was a street dog, and she's still a street dog to her core but in the cutest little way,” Sydney said. “She's delicate and precious and then I turned my back and she's eating like dirt and mud and sticks like what are you doing?”
Well, perhaps you can take the puppy out of the boonies, you can’t always take the boonie out of the puppy. ◉
Thank you to Sydney for sitting down with me and telling us all about Roo. I love the idea that there are so many ex-boonies in different parts of the nation now. Of course, that’s all thanks to the Boonie Flight Project and its partners. If you want to find out more, visit boonieflightproject.com. The group is also on Facebook and Instagram. You can also learn more about how all of this came to be from Boonie Flight Project co-founder Lauren Cabrera, here. 2
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Feel free to send this to someone you know who would enjoy learning about a chihuahua German Shepard boonie baby island girl who is now living it up in Dover.
In this podcast episode, I used music from Pixabay and Freesound. I also used “Signs To Nowhere” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com and “Through The Woods” by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com.
A boonie dog in New Hampshire