Lauren Sullivan was taken aback when she noticed an animal cowering in her backyard storage tent. It was skinny and “wild-looking;” at first, she thought it was a coyote.
Lauren, from Charlotte, North Carolina, first noticed the strange animal after her dogs seemed to take a serious interest in the tent. Reny, Fasta, and Beverly ran over to the tent and couldn’t seem to stop sniffing.
Quickly getting a peek at what she thought was a coyote, Lauren herded her dogs back inside and brought out some food and water for the animal. “I went back inside, fed my dogs,” she told The Dodo. “When I went back outside, the food was completely gone, but the water was untouched.”
Noticing that the animal had eaten the food she put out, she and her husband looked inside the tent and saw that it was, in fact, a dog. However, when they tried to get close, the dog would growl.
“He was scared, but at the same time, he was trying to tell us that he needed help because he was whimpering,” Lauren said.
Determined to win the trust of the dog, Lauren slowly inched closer, while her husband, Sean, stayed behind. The dog would growl and whimper as she continued to approach him, but at the same time, he wouldn’t move. Then, she noticed what she thought was a collar.
“I thought he had a collar on his neck, and I told Sean, ‘Go get a leash,’” she said. “But before he even turned to go do that … I saw that what I thought was his collar was actually his ripped flesh from the rope around his neck. At that point, I started crying. And Sean’s like, ‘Calm down. We’ll take him to the ER.’”
They knew catching the injured stray dog would be a challenge, but after throwing a blanket on him, he didn’t move. “He had given up on life at that point,” Lauren said.
Lauren and Sean loaded the poor pup into a kennel that they had and quickly drove the dog to the emergency vet. During the drive, they were able to spend a bit of time with the dog and decided to name him – Tobie.
After a medical examination, it was determined that Tobie’s neck wound was actually very severe. It was deep, infected, and he was in danger of sepsis. They weren’t even sure if the weak and injured dog would survive.
The injury was caused by a rope that had been tied around Tobie’s neck. He eventually chewed through it to get free.
“They found rope in his poop the next day,” Lauren said. “He probably chewed himself free. He had the will to live.”
Tobie went into surgery that same day, and Lauren and Sean left with positive and optimistic thoughts. When they returned the next day to check on him, they were delighted to see he was doing so well. From that point, they began to visit him every single day.
“I said to Sean, ‘He’s ours. We’re going to fix him up and keep him. We’re not going to give this one away,’” she said.
After a few days of recovery, Tobie was able to go home with his new loving owners. The vets, however, wanted to keep him at the clinic for a bit longer.
“They wanted to hold onto him for a week, but his anxiety was so high that they decided to send him home a few days early because they thought he would recover more quickly if he was at home with us.”
Three or four days after bringing Tobie home from the ER, the sweet boy was wagging his tail.
“We knew he was ready to join the family when he started climbing over the walls and trying to jump out,” Lauren says, talking about his doggie playpen.
Soon, Tobie was out and about, playing with Reny, Fasta, and Beverly. He would even look to them for help doing simple things. He was scared of loud noises and didn’t even know how to drink water from a bowl.
“You could tell that he’d never been inside and that he’d never had a normal dog life,” she said. “He takes his cues from the other dogs, so if they’re calm and relaxed, he’s calm and relaxed.”
It has been nine months since Tobie found his way into the Sullivan’s family, and now, they can’t imagine life without him.
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