I willl never understand how people can be so cruel to their animals. This dog was left outside in the freezing cold, and when rescuers arrived he looked like he had been chained up his entire life. Fortunately, there are good people out there who rescue animals like this.
Cloud is a husky who lived with a neglectful family for 15 years. He grew up in New Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but he was never allowed inside the house. No one knew he was there, until a roof collapses on one of the dilapidated houses on the property.
When emergency workers arrived, they were shocked to find the dog chained up outside. Pennsylvania has multiple rules regarding animal treatment, and this family was breaking all of them.
A regulation known as Libre’s Law was set in place to protect animals in Pennsylvania. It is illegal in that state to keep a dog chained outside for more than 9 hours a day, and when it is freezing outside it is against the law to keep the dog chained for longer than 30 minutes. In addition, dogs cannot be chained in areas that are covered in waste.
Poor Cloud was chained outside his whole life, stuck out in the snow, and bound in an area that was covered in his excrement. The pup was given only a tiny dog house and a broken down car roof for shelter – neither of which protected him from the elements.
When rescue workers from Hillside SPCA arrived, they were horrified at the conditions in which Cloud had been kept. They immediately notified the family that they were breaking the law (in multiple ways), so the people agreed to surrender the dog. But this was only the beginning of Cloud’s recovery.
This dog’s state of health was simply heartbreaking. “When we met Cloud we were in shock at his condition,” Tricia Moyer, the assistant shelter manager at Hillside SPCA, explained to The Dodo. “He was a broken, sad shell of a dog. His fur was thickly matted. He had a large mass on his hind end and he was very thin.” The workers also discovered that Cloud was deaf.
When he arrived at the animal shelter, he was not coping well. He would pace frantically until he passed out, then he would wake up and pace again. The workers realized that the shelter was not going to work out, so they contacted Eleanor Garrett, the co-chair of Senior Dog Haven and Hospice.
She agreed to foster Cloud until he was ready to be adopted into a forever home, but this proved to be no easy task. The dog exhibited the same behavior as he had at the shelter, always pacing. He would not allow Eleanor or her children to touch him. Instead, he tried to hide in the laundry room.
“[Tricia Moyer] was pretty upset,” Eleanor shared. “She sees dogs in all kinds of conditions, but she said, ‘This dog wasn’t acting like a dog at all, he’s just a mess. He’s walking into things.’ I don’t think he’d ever been inside anywhere in his life, so he was just so out of sorts.”
Cloud kept trying to climb behind the drying machine in an attempt to hide from everyone, so Eleanor decided to leave him alone until he came around. One day she finally saw a change in the pup’s behavior.
“I was in my laundry room getting something, and all of a sudden, I felt this little swipe of a paw on my foot,” Eleanor recalled. “I looked down, and he was swiping at me to try and sit down and pet him. So I sat down and I started petting him, and he started giving me kisses, and anytime I stopped, he would swipe his paw at me again.”
From that time on, Cloud was able to cope much more easily. The other dogs Eleanor fostered taught him how to act like a dog, and he was ready for his forever home in no time. It didn’t take long for him to find a family that loved him.
A couple fell in love with the dog right away. “The husband leaned down to pet him, and Cloud got up and gave him a big kiss in the face, and the husband was like, ‘All right. We can do this. We’ve got to take him. We’re definitely taking him,’” Eleanor said.
Now Cloud has been renamed Titus, and he is loving life in his new home. This poor pup will never be neglected again. Instead, he has a life of love and happiness to look forward to.
Our society is lucky to have kind souls like these who will protect animals from mistreatment. If you are thinking of adopting a dog, look at your local animal shelters rather than supporting breeders.
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