Lost dog found badly injured; community comes together to help

September 25, 2023

WBBJ 7 Eyewitness News Staff,

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DECATUR COUNTY, Tenn. – Residents of a local county are coming together to help an animal who is fighting for his life.

A lost dog was discovered in a creek and is now being treated for his injuries.

Buck is a five-year-old Australian Shepherd who went missing on September 14.

Buck was with his owner when he wandered off and was nowhere to be found.

“His owner does lawn care service and Buck goes everywhere with him and he wandered off and he got lost and. Benny Carver is his name. He went looking for him for several hours and several people looked for him into the night into the next day. They posted him on Facebook,” said Karen Cagle, a Decatur County resident.

It wasn’t until the next day that Cagle’s brother found Buck in a creek off Gilbert Road in Darden, about four miles away from where he went missing.

“He was on his run and he came to the creek bed and he decided to look off the culvert, and there he found Buck laid. And Buck was hit and badly injured. He had his rib sticking out of his side, his front leg was mangled, which has now been amputated,” Cagle said.

Cagle’s brother immediately contacted the owners, as he had seen the missing post from the owners the day before.

“He was loaded up and hauled away several miles and disposed of at that creek bed and left to die,” Cagle said.

Since his rescue, Cagle says Buck has been fighting for his life.

She and other residents of Decatur County have come together in effort to help Buck’s owners with medical bills.

“Well our community here in Parsons, Decatur County, we are going to have a fundraiser/bake sale on October 7th in front of Food Giant. Anybody who wants to donate to that, we’d greatly appreciate. We do have donation buckets up at several businesses in town and hoping to get a few more to take them,” Cagle said.