Time and time again, we hear stories of animals who have gone through unnecessary abuse at the hands of the very people that were meant to give them love and care. One pup named Ellen was abandoned at a shelter. Lacking in funds, the staff at the rescue didn’t have the resources to give Ellen the attention she so desperately needed and deserved. The canine’s physical appearance speaks volumes of how poorly it was treated. It is hard to comprehend what would compel a person to bring a pet home only to neglect it.The pup’s owner let the fur grow without a care. The canine’s hair was matted and dirty. The staff couldn’t tell the gender of the animal either.
The dog’s condition was so bad that they couldn’t figure out the direction of its head until they held out a treat to see which end was the front. Further inspection revealed that the fur on the front legs had already started to rip out by the root because it was just too heavy and knotted.
They discovered this canine was actually a girl. “The amount of grooming tools that she had to use to break through the hard shell of fur was unbelievable,” Naiden says. They wound up taking off over two pounds of fur off.
It took over an hour and a half to get rid of all the hair. The animal never growled or barked despite the obvious discomfort, even when the groomer had to pluck out bits of fur that had grown up to 2 inches down into her ear canal. “We wanted a name that was pretty much synonymous with happiness,” says Naden.
“She truly is a miracle,” Naiden says. After getting rid of all the extra hair, her rescuers realized just how tiny Ellen actually is.
The rehabilitation dogs in the rescue taught Ellen how to play and socialize. With time she learned to trust humans again, knowing she was not going to be abused.
It came down to three families but Ellen made the final decision.
Naiden says that when Ellen saw Linus, her eyes lit up and she immediately ran to him. “She made it very apparent that this was the family that she wanted to call her own,” says Naiden.
