a friend in need

This story from a corrections industry newspaper is reported as true, and will wring your heart, but ends happily.  Have a look at a dog's care and compassion for another dog.

FIRST AID TO A FRIEND

The following story of a dog's intelligence, affection and clever understanding which came under the observation of Mr. John E. Dearth, field agent of a county farm bureau in Massachusetts, appeared not long ago in the Worcester Telegram.
A Princeton man who is fond of horses and dogs, says Mr. Dearth, owns a finely bred hunting dog, which he missed for several days. He made inquiries, but no one had seen anything of the animal, and after a week the owner gave him up as lost, strayed or stolen. One of the farm hands was rambling through a chopped off wood lot a few days later and came upon the dog caught in a steel trap that some one had set to catch a skunk or some other game. Both fore-paws were held in the jaws of the trap, and the dog could not escape.
But in spite of his terrible predicament, he was not emaciated; and although in pain, he had not gnawed his forelegs, as many animals will do when they are in the torture of a steel trap. Strangest of all, scattered all around the trapped dog were bones, scraps of meat and various other things that dogs like. Several ham bones and beef bones, with shreds of meat clinging, were right under the captive's nose, and he was chewing a bone when the man discovered his plight.
The trapped dog was carried home in the arms of the man who found him, and a little later the owner went to the trap to see who or what had brought those bones and scraps of food to the suffering captive. While he stood silently regarding the little heap of bones and scraps, another dog from his own kennel came through the brush, her jaws filled with chicken bones, meat trimmings and other gleanings from the kitchen and garbage pail. The dog dropped her load close to the trap and sniffed around as if she were worried. She whined and whimpered when she decided that her friend was gone. The owner called her, and she came slinking trembling toward him, as if she expected to be punished.
The owner patted and fondled her; then he went with her to the trap and let her smell around it to her heart's content, and all the while he kept calling her, "Good old doggy! Good dog!" until she seemed to understand that her master was praising her; and then her joy was unmistakable.
Calling her after him, he went back to the stable, where the injured dog was licking his wounds. When the other dog saw the rescued animal, she showed every indication of joy. She barked, capered round, wagged her tail almost off, and then lent her own moist tongue to the healing process on her friend's sorely bruised paws. The two dogs seemed to understand each other, and the way those two friends expressed friendship was a revelation to the humans who looked on.

-- from Our Paper, "First Aid to a Friend." May 7, 1921, p. 233.