How I Saved a Dog from an Abusive Owner

Last year in November, me and my roommate decided we wanted to get a dog as a friend for our husky and ended up looking for dogs at the local shelter. There weren't any that really matched with us and with our dog so we looked on a local website where people put up their dogs for sale.

I contacted this owner that had a dog that looked so cute and so friendly. He lived two hours away from my house so I asked him if he could keep it for me so I'd have time to drive there to pick him up. He was selling Balou for $150. He said that someone else was coming over to see him and that if he didn't take him, he'd call me. But I didn't want to be halfway there and then turn around because the other person would've left with him. So I offered him $200 to reserve him for me. He accepted.

When I got there, I asked him why he was selling him and his answer was that he just didn't have time for him and that if I wouldn't have come to pick him up, he was sending him to the pound the next day. When Balou came in the room, it was love at first sight. He was such a sweet dog. He was so happy and seemed like a very good dog. Unfortunately, his owner seemed to scare him. He came towards me and asked for hugs. When I bent down to pet him, I noticed that all the hair he had shed the previous summer was all stuck in knots in his hair and was never brushed. I asked the owner what his habits were and he said he was clean, that he had never gone in his house, and that he lived outside all the time in a tiny cage. My heart squeezed at the idea of this nice dog never going inside and just living in this tiny cage I could see. So I put the dog in my car, paid the guy, and headed back home.

On the way home, I noticed that all Balou did was look at the door with a sad look. I thought it was kind of weird, but then maybe he was scared of being in a car. But when I got home, that's when I noticed the extent of the fear he was experiencing. He wouldn't do anything we told him was okay to do and would just put his ears back and look at us, shaking with that scared look on his face. How could someone neglect a poor animal like this? We spent a whole week taking the hair he shedded out from his fur and then brought him to a pet cleaner. She did a wonderful job, but told us he was afraid of water so much that he was traumatized when she tried to put him in the bath. We'll never know exactly what the previous owner did to him to make him so scared of everything, but I can tell you that he is a completely different dog now. He is a happy dog now and loves being around us all the time. I love him very much and he knows it.