Dog Groomer Finds Friendship In Feeding Wild Animals

Just outside McLoud, dog groomer, Dawn Manning and her family enjoy their five acres of land with her three dogs and four donkeys.

“This is mamma, and the brown one is basil, the red one is bunny, and that’s biscuit,” said dog groomer, Dawn Manning.

She has always had a love for animals and leaves food out for animals that she sees, welcoming them to her property.

“We feed the squirrels, and the deer, and the rabbits, and sometimes the armadillos,” said Manning.

While Manning loves her dogs and donkeys, in the spring of 2024, there came a couple of less traditional friends.

“There’s a tree over there with a hole in it and that’s where the babies were born,” said Manning.

It was a family of squirrels, and Manning began leaving peanuts out for them, but there was one that really took a liking to her.

“Hey, you got any more of those peanuts?” said Manning.

She named him Squirrel and soon began feeding him by hand.

“Sometimes he’ll run down the railroad post and just sit next to us and just get up on his hind legs,” said Manning.

The two developed quite the friendship and then, came Poopsi, a cardinal that Manning found in really bad shape.

“We had a storm in June and there was a lot of really high winds, and I was walking up to my shop, and I saw him on the ground,” said Manning.

He had no feathers and had been blown from the nest. After watching him for a few hours, her mother instincts kicked in.

“So, I put him in a shoebox and then I fed him some night crawlers,” said Manning.

Poopsi is healed and now flies free, but comes home to Manning to be fed.

“He knows when I’m coming, and he flies by my head and then he’ll land on the porch and he’ll just sit there and scream at me until I feed him some more,” said Manning.

Her family is in awe of the bonds she has made.

“They’re like what animal are you going to feed now? I’m like, I don’t know, what’s going to show up?” said Manning.

Sadly, Squirrel doesn’t come around as much anymore, maybe once a week, for his fill of peanuts.