When people say rescue, I simply assume they mean they adopted a dog who had been rescued. I get asked by everyone if mine is a rescue and I say yes - she was once rescued from the streets in the Philippines. She stayed at the rescue centre for almost a whole year and was a week away from being put down because no one had wanted to adopt her in the year she was there. For this reason, she was the one my sister chose to adopt.
She then spent 6 very happy years with my sister until another of my sister’s dogs, a 4-year-old German Shepherd puppy that they adopted as a puppy, started attacking her and nearly killed her in the last attack.
That’s when she came to live with me. Who did the rescuing? My sister, essentially - getting her stitched up at the vet, and keeping her isolated from the other dogs so that she could recover. And I gave her a home and continued to care for her wounds until they were healed. So I rescued her from a home that she was no longer safe in, I guess.
So maybe she’s not a rescue but many rescues.
If you are interested, I wrote her story. I will find the link and share.