Samantha, a 4-year-old American bulldog mix, has always wondered what true love felt likе.
After wandering the streets of southern Florida, the sweet dog found her way to Miami-Dade Animal Services (MDAS). At the shelter, Samantha wore a heartbrơkеn expression that moved her rеscuеrs.
Volunteers from the shelter cleaned Samantha up and gave her the medical attention she needed. Soon, she was ready to find her forever home, so her new friends placed her on their adơрtables list and started advertising her picture. Everyone at the shelter was smitten with Samantha and hoped that she’d find her family quickly, but, to their surprise, a year went by with no inquiries.
As the months passed, Samantha’s frown grew deeper and deeper.
Over a year later, MDAS reached maximum capacity and could no longer hold Samantha. They contacted Humans and Animals United (HAU) to see if they could help find the loving dog a home and sent a few pictures of Samantha in her kennel as part of their plea.
“Those photos broke us,” Rosa Fond, HAU’s founder and president, told The Dodo. “We decided to pick her up, and then we’d figure out the rest.”
Before long, a volunteer from HAU was outside MDAS’s doors, ready to transport Samantha to her new temporary home. She loaded the dog into her car and started driving home when she noticed that Samantha was having a tough time with the change.
“Samantha wasn’t really responding to the person who picked her up,” Fond said. “She was too scared.”
The volunteer tried to make Samantha feel comfortable in the car, but she soon realized that her efforts weren’t working. So she pulled over and started talking to Samantha in a gentle, soothing voice.
“She stopped the car and just talked to her for, likе, 10 minutes,” Fond said. “That’s when Samantha started opening up. She started smiling as the volunteer was talking to her.”
A few moments later, Samantha’s unsure expression changed to an ear-to-ear grin. The once-lonely dog finally knew that she was seen and that soon she’d be loved.
The volunteer then dropped the pup off with a local trainer who’d offered to board and work with Samantha for 30 days. It wasn’t yet a forever home, but Samantha immediately started to thrive in her new setting.
“She did wonderfully there,” Fond said. “She’s been doing so, so good.”
