He went from being bullied to being loved.
If you live in Cleveland, Texas, you might have seen a scrappy, wire-haired dog limping on his search for food and shelter. Hurting, hungry and exhausted, last month the dog flopped down in the middle of the street and refused to get up.
“I truly believe he will get run over any day now if he doesn’t get help,” Zully Vasquez Ventura, a Cleveland resident and animal advocate, wrote in a Facebook post. A video with the post shows a car driving towards the dog in the road, missing him by just a few feet.
Laura Forma, founder and executive director at ThisIsHouston, a rescue organization that focuses on injured and sick dogs, came across Ventura’s plea later that night.
Forma reached out to her team, asking if anyone could pick him up. Tara Hall, a board member and volunteer, saw the message early the next morning and sprang into action.
Hall is an experienced foster. That Friday, she drove out to expertly corral the timid, yet friendly dog, later named Sawyer, into her car. Hall took him to see a vet at Cypress Fairhaven Animal Hospital for evaluation.
“He was covered in fleas,” Hall told The Dodo.
The vet guessed Sawyer was about 4 years old. The pup was treated for infections in both ears and an abscess in one front paw. X-rays showed both of Sawyer’s back legs had been broken before. One healed correctly, but the other healed “funky,” as Hall put it. When Sawyer walks, his back right leg juts out in a crooked step. The vet recommended amputation.
“We didn’t know anything about him,” Hall said, so she agreed to bring Sawyer back in two weeks for a check-in and to further discuss amputating his leg. But over those two weeks, Sawyer showed everyone that his unusual back leg didn’t bother him one bit.
“He runs up and down the stairs, jumps on the bed, jumps on the couch, runs around and plays with other dogs in the house,” Hall said.
She also noticed Sawyer never had accidents in his kennel. “That’s not normal,” she said, adding that true street dogs take a while to learn what it means to “go potty” outside. “He never had that learning curve,” Hall said. This meant Sawyer probably lived inside with a family at some point.
Around that same time, a few hours away in Austin, Bobbie Nolen couldn’t stop looking at ThisIsHouston’s Facebook posts about Sawyer.
“I saw the video that they posted and was like, ‘That’s my dog. I’m gonna do whatever I can to get that dog,’” Nolen told The Dodo. She submitted an adoption application and drove out to Houston to meet Sawyer.
“As soon as [I] got there, he jumped in my lap,” Nolen said. “I was definitely in love after that first meeting.” Nolen just had to wait for Sawyer to complete the rest of his medical care before she could take him home.
But, at Sawyer’s next vet check-in, a different doctor examined him and listened to Hall describe Sawyer’s playful personality and physicality. Not only did that vet decide amputation could wait, if it needed to happen at all, she also believed Sawyer was much younger, probably no more than 1 1/2 years old.
Sawyer spent the next three weeks with Hall, as he healed physically and emotionally. “He’s a goofy boy,” Hall said. “He doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.”
On July 13, Nolen picked up her new family member. She renamed him Walter. It’s been five days now, and Walter, who once lay in a busy street, having given up, is thriving.
“He already runs the house,” Nolen said, laughing. “He lets me know what he wants, when he wants it.”
https://volume.thedodo.com/embed/590e5ffef?autoplay=true&loop=true&placement=article&player_type=chorus&tracking=article:lede&privacy_consent=allBobbie Nolen
Walter has toys and a yard, where he and Nolen play fetch. They cuddle on the couch and watch the neighborhood out the windows together.
There are still moments when Walter forgets he’s no longer on the street, fighting to survive. “I have all of his food in a big Tupperware container,” Nolen said. “When I go to feed him, I open the container, and he very, very gently — and I think he thinks he’s being sneaky — puts his head in and gets a little bite of food and then takes off running.” It breaks Nolen’s heart to see Walter worry about getting enough to eat.
“He had his first homemade pup cup yesterday,” Nolen said. “We’ve had some fresh strawberries and pineapple and watermelon and baby carrots. He is gonna live a very good life.”
If you would like to support ThisIsHouston, you can donate via their website.