He was an fucking asshole!
No, the people at the shelter didn’t know him, that’s because he left the dog tied up outside with a note sometime before they opened.
He was a guy who beat OBL. I know this because when I got him if I lifted my hand to say, scratch my nose, he’d cower & he was always skittish around men.
Another family took him for a day or two but returned him to the vet/kennel supposedly because their son was allergic, I think it was because he was a crazy kookamonga. Damn glad they didn’t keep him cause he was very sweet & loving (despite being a PITA).
I was able to beat the beatings out of him though. I (playfully) hit him so much that he learned when I started bopping him it was time to run away, with tail up high, eyes scanning the room for…that toy. 'Cause it meant playtime!
Well, we found her in the school dumpster. We suspect the owners left her there so that she’d be more likely to find food and perhaps be noticed by an owner. Since she was abandoned so young (probably less than a month old), we suspect her owners did not try to give her away, and that she was not a gift puppy. She has a weird underbite, but otherwise looks like a healthy chihuahua. And she was very well behaved.
So our guess is that whoever had her breeds chihuahuas and didn’t want this “broken” one, but was either too embarrassed to take her to a shelter, or had something against them. (A tiny puppy in a dumpster having a better chance at life than one in a shelter is just silly.)
We know that she was owned by an elderley lady. We suspect her owner talked to her a lot, because she is very experienced in ‘conversing’, i.e.
“Meow!”
“Hi Mitzy, how are you?”
“Merow.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Meeeerrr!”
“Fascinating.”
“Mrrrp.”
My cat was 8 when we adopted her. I don’t know how many previous owners she had, but I suspect her last owner didn’t get out much and was really devoted/extremely lenient. I don’t know for sure why the cat was surrendered, but I would guess she belonged to an old lady and the old lady died. Our kitty was marvelously well-adjusted and started purring instantly when I picked her up in the shelter. She prefers being held and petted to anything else. She’s too heavy to hold for as long as she’d like. But if she had her way, she would perch/sleep on my lap/stomach for 23+ hours a day.
Due to my fiance’s allergies, we recently had to bar her from the bed. But when she used to sleep with me, she would snuggle right up under my chin and purr herself (and me) to sleep :3
Tehehe, Finn, whose “Old Mum” was also an old lady, does the same! Very chatty. If you stop talking to him he politely taps you with his paw to get your attention. tap tap tap “'Scuse me, we were talking?”
I love reading all these stories. Some are sad, but it makes me happy that they have found their forever home with people who try to understand where their quirks come from. 
Keep 'em coming!
This is pretty clever. I’ve known a few dogs who’ve been mistreated, and never known how to get them to stop fearing raised voices and “threatening” gestures. Making it a game… is clever.
Awww, I love the idea of the tap tap tap! I’ve always been tempted to record one of Mitzy’s conversations. The range of meows she has is quite impressive!
I knew one woman (who has since died) who got a shelter cat, and she realized he was afraid of the newspaper. It didn’t take much to figure out why, so she let him know that his new person did not use the newspaper to hit cats. It took a while, but he eventually figured it out.
My kitty Matilda is very much into conversation. When I get home we meow back and forth for a couple of minutes until she flops over to get her belly petted. I adopted her at four years old and the shelter told me she was given up because she couldn’t get along with another cat in a combined household. I hope she was hard to give up because she is so friendly and sweet and charms everybody she meets.
The shelter had had her for three weeks, and in that time she contracted herpes, so her runny eyes might have been a turn off, but I can’t see why someone didn’t pick her right away. The shelter worker was trying to sell me on a tortie that couldn’t be bothered to wake up for me, when Matilda jumped on table and rolled right over so we would pet her belly. I couldn’t resist.
When Marla was picked up she had a broken tail, was deathly afraid of people, never made any noises and would only eat the blandest of canned cat food. We were told that she was strictly an indoor cat, but I’m guessing that whoever owned her did their best to break her like a beaten dog.
Pretty sure of the following: They bred her as soon as she was able to make puppies, and her food was not nutritious while she was pregnant or nursing. They never spoke to her or petted her. They kept her pregnant and nursing until it became apparent that her puppies were not selling for as much as they wanted, so they sold her to breed rescue. She is half her desired size and weight, and her teeth aren’t very good. She has no idea how to play with toys.
On the plus side, all she wants is to be loved.
I forgot something - our basenjis previous owners named them. We decided not to change them when they came to us, to help ease the transition. So we have Zephyr and Epilogue (:rolleyes:) more commonly known as Zef and Epi. (That’s Epi in the green collar, and Zef in pink. We got her pink because people always thought she was a boy.)
Yesterday, we had to put Sydney Hellcatdown, after it became clear that she was rapidly going downhill, likely from difuse lymphoma and kidney failure. Good-bye sweet baboo.
She had been a family pet for 10 years but was abandoned at a vet’s after he refused to put her down because the family said their 10 year old had become allergic to her. She was hyperthyroid so we had her treated with irradiated iodine. She was never really a healthy cat and cranky as all get out. But we loved her and she seemed to appreciate the life we were able to give her.
Kultawas elderly when I got her. She was so well behaved. I suspect that her owner(s) must have died and whoever ended up with her thought to abandon her in an area with farms. ?? Who knows, that’s just speculation on my part. I was lucky to end up with her for the last few years of her life.
Ursula (the shorter, prick-eared dog - the other dog is Kita, whom I got from a friend) had run away from her previous family. She seemed pretty well adjusted, except to cower if someone picked up a stick to throw to the dogs. After having her for half a year, her previous owner saw her, took her back for a week then returned her, saying she was better off with me. About two years later, a friend found a badly burned, beaten and stabbed body while jogging. Turned out the be the victim of Ursula’s previous owner. :eek:
brachyrhynchos, that’s a scary story.:eek: At least Ursula made it out alive.
Not meaning to be morbid, but I’m confused: brachyrhynchos, was the body human?
Yes, the victim was a human, a woman he claimed was trying to have sex with him when he didn’t want her. He had picked her up at a bar and taken her to the bluffs above the town. His “refusal” included hitting her with his truck, which was found with blood on it. This was in Pocatello Idaho, maybe 25 years ago. That poor woman was really brutalized.
I was stunned to hear about this, even though his response to me upon seeing Ursula for the first time was, “I didn’t even know she was gone because I had been in jail (for something mnor).” When he brought Ursula back to me, it was because he had gotten an apartment that didn’t allow dogs and he said she’d be better with me than his relatives. Yikes.
You guys are all lucky. All the rescues I had were total jerks. They weren’t given up to the shelter because the owners were abusive, the animals themselves had serious behavior issues.
Here’s a list:
Yellow tabby, 6 weeks old: would let you pet her for about a minute before biting and clawing your hands and legs.
Pitbull/lab mix: chewed everything, barked at nothing, ate anything, broke his chain and attacked other dogs on the street on several occasions. After he broke the thickest chain I could get, I had to return him to the shelter.
Pregnant black cat: chose us to feed her while she was pregnant, but she was the biggest slut on the block. As soon as she had her litter, she would be out every single night calling her next one night stand.
Since then, I’ve stuck to purebreds.
I believe he was abandoned. They found him on the streets and the shelter took him in. He is very affectionate, was housebroken and settled in our home within an hour. He hates the outdoors and starts crying as soon as he’s out the door for any reason.
My English Setter Sugar came to me as a foster. She was afraid of everything, skinny, terrified to come in the house, and had previously broken ribs that healed wrong and sort of stick out on her side. If I reached above her to pet her, she cringed and ducked. Hugs terrified her.
About 2 weeks after I got her, she woke up in the middle of the night, I assume from a nightmare, literally screaming. She sounded like a human screaming NOOOOOOOO! She made a dive into my arms, trembling. That was the day I decided she was never leaving me, and I put in for her adoption the next day.
From that, I assume that her previous owner (who dumped her off at a shelter with a male English Setter in Georgia) was an uncaring asswipe that abused and neglected her.
I am happy to say that a year later, Sugar lives up to her name and is the sweetest dog on the earth. She is happy, silly and loves hugs now. I hate thinking about the life she had before.
We adopted two Pekingese brothers from a rescue organization in March. One, Dallas, is a happy, out-going little guy. Has no fear, knows no strangers, and loves to be cuddled. Houston would run to a corner and hide.
We knew they came from a breeder who got too old to care for them, but other than that, we aren’t sure of their upbringing. They were 2 years old when the rescue organization got them, and they’re 2 1/2 now.
After getting neutered, chipped, some loose teeth removed, and Houston’s huge nasal fold reduced, and of course a lot of love, Houston is now almost as loving as Dallas. Houston will still bark when I come home at night but it’s a happy bark.
My theory? Dallas is smaller and “cuter” and I think he was singled out and given more love. Houston is puffier and a tiny bit larger (by maybe a pound; both are in the 10-11 lb. range) and he may have been ignored or just not as socialized.
So I think the more outgoing one was rewarded and the shyer one was not encouraged. But I’ve seen an almost 180 in Houston since we first got him and to me, that’s what rescue is all about.
Oh, and they rescued me, too - my 15 y.o. peke had died in February so there was a huge old hole in our home; these little guys are filling it.
I’ll post a pic but I have to exit and use IE.