Woman goes to animal shelter and asks for dog no one else wants

Every year roughly 1.5 million shelter animals are euthanized in the U.S. because they cannot find a home, according to the ASPCA.

This is especially true for animals with health issues or senior cats and dogs. That’s why it takes a special kind of person to seek out these animals.

Melani Andrews is one such animal-lover.

She wanted to give a home to a dog who had little chance of being adopted.

So when she went to the Front Street Animal Shelter, she asked for the oldest and hardest-to-adopt dog.

“I just decided that it had to be a dog that wasn’t going to get picked up by anybody and he deserved better than to die in a shelter,” Andrews said.

Andrews was coping with two tragedies at the time she made the selfless decision.

The 72-year-old (at the time) had just lost her husband. Then, not long after, the Staffordshire terrier named Lola who helped her get through it passed away.

“I was feeling down and a little depressed,” Andrews told The Dodo. “My grandkids came over one night, and they said, ‘Grandma, you need somebody to keep you company. You can’t just sit around here all by yourself.”

Her grandchildren suggested she get another dog – not to replace Lola, of course, but to keep her company.

Andrews brought her grandchildren along with her to the Front Street Animal Shelter in Sacramento, California when she decided to take their advice.

City of Sacramento
Source:

City of Sacramento

But she knew what she was looking for.

“I wanted to help somebody — a dog — like Lola helped us, and so I told them I wanted the oldest dog they had, the one that everybody was passing up, and that I wanted to adopt him,” Andrews said. “I don’t care if he’s sick, I don’t care if the shelter can help with bills. I don’t have a lot of money, but I’m sure I have enough to take care of a little dog.”

Shelters are never hard-up for hard-to-adopt animals, so the shelter workers showed her 3 dogs that fit the bill.

But it was 12-year old Jake who stood out to her.

“Jake’s two friends ignored me, but Jake perked up and started howling,” Andrews said. “So I said, ‘It looks like he wants to go, and I’ll take him.’”

Jake, a terrier, was picked up as a stray and had been in the shelter for months. He was deaf, partially blind, and had terminal cancer.

“They informed me that he had cancer and he had a limited amount of time,” Andrews said. “And I thought, ‘We’re going to make his time as good as we can make it.’”

The staff was thrilled that Jake would spend his final days in a loving home and have someone to willingly care for all of his special needs.

“Jake has been with us for a long time, is a senior and has cancer in addition to skin problems,” a Facebook post from Front Street read. “He was getting passed up time and time again. But Melani came to the shelter not just to find a great dog, but to save a life and give unconditional love to a dog in need. As you can see, it’s a match made in heaven. Please help us thank Melani…People like her are our heroes.”

Melanie Andrews via The Dodo
Source:

Melanie Andrews via The Dodo

Andrews is now comfortable with death – and she knew she’d have to go through it with Jake.

But she said the dog deserved an honorable death – and she could give him that when the time came.

But first, she planned to give him a great life.

“Every day I laugh a little bit more,” Andrews told The Dodo of bringing Jake home. “It’s not so lonesome. I think [Jake] knows that I love him because he’ll come over to me and he’ll rub up against me and ask me to rub his backside. And then he’ll nose me with his nose. And a dog that doesn’t know that somebody loves him wouldn’t be doing anything like that.”