Baby deer hand-reared by family becomes best friends with two dogs

I've lived in the village since December 81. That's here in South Brent. I spent 33 years in the police force and I retired about 15 years ago to basically buy this place. But I ran the falconry business to basically generate the funds to do the Raptor rescue work I do because I've got the deer pens. When I've been chatting to the vets and the vet staff, they know I've got the deer pen. So I'm now starting to get phone calls about deer Trouble is when normally it's because they've been hit by a car and they go down with shock very quickly and die. But we've had one in, in the spring, she recovered and was, she's basically, I never locked her in. She's in a pen that she could get out of when she was fit enough to get out. And that's what I did with her. And in the last fortnight I've had phone calls for 2 deer, but one I took to the vet and had to be euthanized, that was a tiny little Rd. deer fawn. And another one was up in near Okehampton and that died before they could ever get it to a vet's. They they just go down with shock. But at least the facility's here. And if a deer does come in, it survives it. You know, we've got the facility to look after it and release it from here once it's fit and well. Millie's the first fawn I've ever had. And I know just from general knowledge and experience that deer do not well do well as youngsters. They're very difficult to rear. But when she first came in, she was clearly barely 24 hours old the the umbilical cord with still little soggy elastic band of a thing, You know, she was tiny, but clearly newborn. Her. Her coat wasn't even properly dry. It was still patchy where it'd come out. And when the vets rang me, my initial thing was, look, get hold of the woman who's just brought it in, get hold of her and say no, take it back to where you found it and put it back. But they said, look, she's just come in, this has been abandoned, dumped it on us and walked straight out. I've got the various fluids for hydration. So initially it was get her onto some hydration fluids just to get some fluids into her. Then it's a matter of she's so young, can you put her straight onto milk or and, and all sorts of issues. So I did a quick crash course on the Internet and most of the advice is don't do it because it's not going to work. But the overriding thing was if it's a fallow deer, get it onto goat's milk. The dogs were great. They took to her from the moment she arrived and they'd clean her up from 1 end to the other, lick her all over, make sure she was clean and she just, she just imprinted and that was that. Would I want her back in the wild? Ideally, yes. I wish I'd never had her, but that, that sounds quite horrible. I've actually actually adored having her. She's been fantastic. It's been an incredible experience. But in an ideal world, she never would have come in. But the fact is that she did. So it's now down to me to give her a quality of life where she's, you know, engaged and occupied all the time and allowing her to be a deer where we can. That trust in the bonding, that's the important bit, and that's what I get from it.