Olivia
Home for the Holiday
While driving on the interstate toward her home in Lexington, KY, on Thanksgiving weekend 2004, Ashleigh Lucas saw a light-colored dog appear in the line of her headlights. “It happened so fast, to this day I don't even know how I missed hitting her,” Ashleigh tells us.
She immediately pulled onto the shoulder and got out to find the dog. “I spotted her on the side of the road, limping—it turned out she’d been hit by a car. It was raining and the cars were flying by, going at least 70 miles per hour.” The pooch walked up a little hill and Ashleigh followed. “She sat down and I came to her slowly and gently put my hand out,” Ashleigh remembers. “That’s when I saw that her face was scratched and bloody.”
Ashleigh coaxed the pooch—a pit bull she named Olivia—down the hill. “I picked her up, put her in the back seat of my car and away we drove to an emergency animal clinic.” The veterinarian estimated Olivia’s age to be seven years.
Now a far cry from that injured dog on the roadside, this healthy eleven-year-old has her own bedroom, “which is actually our living room,” Ashleigh admits. “Our old couch is in there and she loves to lay on it for naps, as well as at bedtime.” And quiet as Olivia is, this girl has no shame when it comes to lovin’ it up. “She greets people at the door, looking for head-pats and rolling over for belly rubs,” brags her mom.
“She is such a nurturing dog!” says Ashleigh. “I have a six-month-old baby boy now and she’s excellent with him! She gives him kisses and wants him to rub her belly, too. I had never been around a pit bull before that night on the road—now I can honestly say that I’d always want to have one.”