WESTBROOK – A blind, 14-year-old chihuahua was rescued from the cold on March 6, the day before a nor’easter brought more than a foot of snow to the city thanks to the goodwill of the Westbrook community.

Graham Road resident Kathy Clarrage was driving back from the Westbrook Community Center that evening and was just turning on her road when her headlights caught a small animal on the side of the road. Clarrage got out of her vehicle and picked up a dog, which was shivering. At first, she thought the dog, coincidentally named Bambi, was a baby deer.

“The dog didn’t have a collar or anything that said where the dog belonged,” she said.

Clarrage, a life-long animal lover, didn’t have to think twice about trying to find who in her neighborhood, or the city, owned the dog, which she didn’t recognize.

“I’ve always had cats and dogs up to a few years ago when my beloved jack russell terrier died.” While she doesn’t have a dog now, she connects with and talks to each dog in her neighborhood.  “I do still very much have a love of dogs,” she said.

Clarrage stopped and talked with several of her neighbors, none of whom were familiar with the dog. She stopped at the house of Cindy and Charlie Shepard, who live next to the condominium development Clarrage lives in. Just after 7 p.m. Clarrage and the Shepards put a lost dog notice on her Facebook page and the Facebook pages of Maine Lost Dog Recovery and the Westbrook Community Board.  Former Westbrook Post Office mail carrier Kim Stokes, who delivered mail in the neighborhood for four years, saw Shepard’s post and 15 minutes after the post went live, responded that she knew the dog belonged to residents of Longley Road.

“I knew the dog right off. I said ‘That’s Bambi,’ the second I saw her,” said Stokes, who retired from the postal service in September after delivering mail in the city for 20 years.

Bambi was brought to the Bates, who had been out looking for their dog in the woods that surround the neighborhood.

“She knew all the dogs and people in the neighborhood. She is the true hero,” Clarrage said of Stokes. “She did more than deliver the mail. She connected with the people along her route.”

While Stokes’ job was to make sure mail was delivered every day, she made sure the dogs along her route had a little something as well.

“As I met dogs along my route, I would give them treats. If they were not home, I would leave a treat in the mailbox so the owners could bring a treat in for them,” Stokes said.

Although Bambi didn’t get too far — she was found less than a quarter mile from where she lives — and was ultimately saved before something could happen to her, Clarrage knows the story could have ended much differently without the support of her neighbors, their former mail carrier and the power of social media.

“It is a very heartwarming story. It still chokes me up thinking about it,” she said. “They say it takes a village to raise a child. It was a village that helped that little dog that night.”

“I knew all the dogs on my route,” Stokes said. “I was glad to help her get back to where she belonged.”

Michael Kelley can be reached at 781-3661 x 125 or [email protected]

Bambi, a 14-year-old chihuahua, was reunited with her family March 6 through the goodwill of the Graham Road neighborhood, and its former mail carrier. (Courtesy photo)