Shelter staff had moved her into the photo studio, a space usually reserved for adoption portraits with good lighting and clean backdrops. Instead of sitting pretty for the camera, Sally pressed herself into the farthest corner, trembling so hard her body seemed like it might rattle apart. She wasn’t on the blanket we laid out for her—another clue that she probably hadn’t experienced soft things before.
This is the kind of dog many people walk past. Too skinny, too frightened, too shut down. But I’ve learned that the dogs who look like they’ve given up often just need one person to sit with them long enough for a spark to flicker.
The Forgotten Ones
Sally is a Beagle mix, about a year and a half old, weighing barely 27 pounds when she came in. The notes on her kennel card said it all: “Stray. Underweight. Not leash trained. Caution: tries to bite.”
She had been brought in by a Good Samaritan a week earlier, without a collar or microchip. For all we know, she had been surviving on her own for months. Her ribs jutted out, her eyes darted nervously, and she hovered between bolting for the door and collapsing in place…