An American bulldog named Frances had odds stacked against her after her owner passed – she was forgotten and left behind. Thankfully, weeks later, a miracle would happen.
A renovation team was doing work on a house in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami, Florida when they accidentally tripped a security alarm. The alarm let out a loud blaring noise which caused Frances to perk up and stand on the landing of the house next door. This is when a worker named Claire Morera saw her.
Claire could sense that something didn’t seem right and decided to go get a closer look at the dog. What she saw completely shocked her. The poor dog was covered in ticks, emaciated, had terrible infections in both of her eyes, and had a five-pound chain around her neck.
Horrified by the dog’s condition, Claire took photos of Frances and posted them on Facebook. Soon, Jan Stenger from 100+ Abandoned dogs of Everglades Florida got involved.
“We were actually on a different rescue that morning, but I looked up Frances’ location on my phone and we were 9 miles away from her,” Jan told The Dodo. “[Other volunteers] stayed behind to try and catch that other dog, and then we took off to go get Frances.”
Jan hadn’t seen a condition as horrible as Frances’ in all the four years that she has been rescuing dogs in the Miami area. It absolutely broke her heart.
“I always said that one of our crew members, Carol, and I are strongest-minded,” Jan said. “We don’t break easily, but we were both a mess on that rescue. That truly was the worst thing I had ever seen in my life. I get choked up just thinking about it.”
Jan and Carol spoke with neighbors and were saddened to find out that Frances’ owner had passed away, leaving her outside alone and exposed to the elements.
“People knew she was left there, and she obviously wasn’t being fed appropriately, if at all,” Jan said.
Judging by how skinny Frances was, the rescuers assumed that the poor girl had been left outside for at least a couple of weeks. The chain was too difficult for them to remove, so they had to carry her off of the landing with it still attached.
“It took us a while to get the chain off her when we got her back to the animal hospital because we didn’t have bolt cutters,” Jan said. “When we finally did get the chain off of her, that was the first time she wagged her tail.”
They took the sick dog to the animal hospital and found that her eyes were her biggest concern. They were so badly infected that they would need to be removed.
“She had thousands of ticks on her,” Jan said. “She stayed in the bathtub for five hours the first night and three hours the next morning getting ticks taken off of her body.”
Thankfully, the American bulldog didn’t have any diseases from the ticks and didn’t have any heartworm, so otherwise, she was surprisingly healthy. Although she was emaciated, the rescue staff were confident that she’d gain weight quickly.
After allowing Frances to stay with her after her surgeries and medical care, Jan couldn’t help but fall in love with her.
“Never in a million years did I think we would keep her,” Jan said. “I’ve always had boy dogs and I’ve always had Labs and goldens. But we knew pretty quickly that she wasn’t going to go anywhere.”
Now, despite having lost her sight, she can’t stop smiling. Frances knows that she’s in a safe, loving home and seems to be the happiest dog ever. She loves sleeping, eating, and, of course – cuddling with her new mom.
“She’s a good snuggler,” Jan said. “She’ll take naps lying on top of me, and at night she curls up in a ball next to me. She always has to be touching me.”
Like many adoptions and rescues, Jan says she can’t imagine her life without Frances – we’re certain that the feeling is reciprocated.
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