Woman Flies All The Way To Iran To Save A Sick Pug She’s Never Met

A local Iranian animal lover, however, saw Chance at the family’s home, and took the video of him that eventually made its way to St. James and Kargosha.

St. James offered to pay for Chance’s flight to the U.S., and also for the surgery he desperately needed. But when St. James and Kargosha tried to find a volunteer to fly Chance from Iran to the U.S., they had a lot of trouble — it had a lot to do with President Trump’s travel ban, which prohibited citizens from Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from obtaining visas and entering the U.S.

Chance after he was transported to the U.S. | The Pug Queen

“We couldn’t find anybody,” Kargosha told The Dodo. “Iranians were canceling their flights because everybody was scared to leave the country … they didn’t know what was going to happen. They thought maybe they wouldn’t be able to get back to the United States.”

But Chance didn’t have that much time — he desperately needed surgery if he was going to live. Since St. James and Kargosha couldn’t figure out how to get Chance to the U.S., a local family offered to pay for his surgery in Iran, and then keep him in foster care.

The surgery, however, didn’t go well, and Chance seemed to have less mobility than he did before, according to St. James.

Chance once he was transported to the U.S. | The Pug Queen

“He couldn’t walk on his own,” St. James said. “They had to hand-feed him and help him go to the bathroom. They had to make sure he didn’t move and hurt himself after that surgery — he could hurt himself.”

The foster family may have been well-intentioned in the beginning, but they ultimately decided that Chance was too much work, St. James explained. They tried to find him another place, but ended up giving him back to his original family — the same people who caused the neck injury in the first place.

Not surprisingly, this turned out to be a terrible decision. A few days later, Chance’s original family dumped him on the side of the road.

Chance abandoned on the side of the road in Iran | The Pug Queen

“They didn’t want him, so they left him on the side of a road in a dirt patch right by the curb,” St. James said. “He had no food or no water, he was just laying there in the dark.”

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