“She is totally the most forgiving, lovable little girl ever. There’s not a mean bone in her body.”
It was a thumping sound that caused the man to pause next to the dumpster.
Thump, thump, thump.
When the man stepped up to the dumpster and peered inside, he saw a large cardboard box covered in duct tape. Whatever was thumping seemed to be inside that box.
The man lifted the box and ripped it open. Inside was a large 5-month-old puppy, who’d later be named Sally. The cardboard was smeared with blood, but the dog’s tail was wagging, rhythmically hitting the side of the box.
“She’s not little,” Patti Dawson, executive director and vice president of Dallas DogRRR, the group that helped rescue Sally, told The Dodo. “Sally’s a 35-pound dog. I really had a hard time imagining how they [her former owner] put her into that box.”
It did look like Sally had tried to escape — Dawson believes the blood came from Sally’s paws as she tried to scratch her way out.
“You can tell she was definitely fighting her way out,” Dawson said. “If you look at where the blood is, it’s really where her paws and legs were.”
While no one knows how long Sally was in there, Dawson can’t imagine it was longer than a few hours.
“It was in the 90s that day,” she said. “I don’t know how long you’d be able to survive in that heat for long.”
The man took Sally to his home in Dallas and did what he could for her. Besides being trapped inside a box, Sally had terrible mange and she was running a fever.
“At first, she was just lethargic,” Dawson said. “Once he got her out, she just laid there, but then he got her to drink. I think she drank nine bowls of water — she was so dehydrated.”
The man posted a picture of her on Twitter, asking for help. When he didn’t get a quick response, he called a Dallas city shelter, which arranged for animal control to pick Sally up.
But when volunteers from Dallas DogRRR, as well as its partner organization in New York, Second Chance Rescue, saw Sally’s picture on Twitter, they immediately called the shelter and arranged to get her out.
Dawson was the one who picked her up from the shelter, and she still can’t get over how sweet Sally was.
“I’ve been doing rescue now for two-plus years, and I have never been embraced the way she embraced me upon our first meeting,” Dawson said. “She is totally the most forgiving, lovable little girl ever. There’s not a mean bone in her body.”
“She literally embraced me and kissed my face for 15 minutes,” Dawson added. “I was sitting on the ground, and she just wrapped her paws around me.”
Despite Sally’s friendly greeting, Dawson knew the dog needed medical attention. So she rushed Sally to the vet, where she was treated for dehydration, mange, a secondary skin infection, fever and respiratory issues. Then, after 36 hours, Sally was stable enough to be released.
Sally stayed with Dawson for a couple days, and then she went into foster care — and, according to Dawson, she’s proving to be a resilient puppy.
“I see dogs who are harmed on a daily basis, and we [Dallas DogRRR] take in a huge amount of medical cases, and some dogs are affected by things that have happened to them,” Dawson said. “But Sally is a true love bug. She just wants to be on your lap and she wants to be loved and cuddled. If you’re sitting, she’s going to be sitting on top of you.”
Sally’s sweet personality makes it impossible for Dawson to understand the person who dumped her in the trash.
“I really don’t know how you can look at a dog like her and put her in a box,” Dawson said. “And when you’re putting that tape on there … I can tell you now, just knowing her personality, she would be looking up at them and trusting her human.”
The rescue group is currently taking applications for Sally’s adoption. Ideally, they’d like her to go to a home in Dallas so that they can do follow-up visits and keep track of how she’s doing.
“She’s not had a great start — between the mange and the skin infection and being trapped in a box,” Dawson said. “And she deserves a home that is going to love her for everything that she is.”
