Mitchell, 45, found out that Vanessa, a senior pit bull, had actually been dropped off at the dog shelter in August 2012 when she was a puppy. Her owners were moving and didn’t desire her any longer.
For more than a years, Vanessa has actually invested most of her life in a kennel at Villalobos, a pit bull rescue that holds 400 to 500 dogs, with about 50 embraced monthly. Vanessa was passed over each time.
Mitchell said she stopped cold on July 14 when she saw Vanessa’s big brown eyes — and her story.
“I saw her sweet little face, and my heart just went out to her,” said Mitchell, a paramedic who resides in Greenwood, Del., about 8 miles from the Maryland border. “It made me sad to think to think that she’d lived her whole life without a family.”
Mitchell had a feeling the senior pooch would be a best fit with her 3 other rescue dogs, Emma, Keagan and Maggie. She sent her application to adopt Vanessa right now.
“I had adopted two dogs from Villalobos in the past, and I knew when I saw Vanessa that I had to get her,” she said. “I wanted her to know the love of a home.”
Tia Torres, the shelter’s creator, might hardly think it when she received Mitchell’s application about thirty minutes after she’d published Vanessa’s story on Facebook. She was shocked once again when lots of other adoption deals started to gather, she said.
“She’s a really sweet dog with no behavioral issues, but through no fault of her own, she just got overlooked,” Torres said. “Not one person has ever noticed her until now.”
Torres’s shelter increased to popularity as the topic of the Animal Planet reality series “Pit Bulls & Parolees,” which completed its last season in 2015 revealing the lives of previously incarcerated volunteers and the dogs they help at Villalobos.
Torres keeps in mind the day Vanessa was dropped off at the shelter. It was a blistering summer season afternoon in 2012, and a couple drove the puppy to the shelter in the back of a confined moving truck, she said.
“They pulled up, rolled the truck door open and left her here like a piece of old furniture,” Torres said. “She appeared to be about 12 weeks old, and she was emaciated. If she’d been left in that hot truck much longer, she would have died.”
Vanessa was immunized and dealt with for dehydration, then she was made sterile and installed for adoption on the Villalobos website a couple of months later on, Torres said.
It’s a misunderstanding that puppies constantly get embraced rapidly, Torres said, explaining that Vanessa had numerous strikes versus her when she concerned the shelter.
“Number one, she is a black dog, and black dogs are often overlooked,” she said. “She’s also a pit bull, and although the image people have of pit bulls is changing, they still have lower adoption rates.”
Vanessa was likewise living at a shelter where numerous dogs are up for adoption, and Southern shelters are overflowing with animals that were disposed of after the pandemicTorres said.
“We have a lot of dogs, so she was one of many,” she said. “We’ve had other dogs that have grown up with us since they were puppies. All we could do was keep trying and not give up hope that we’d eventually find her a home.”
As Vanessa grew to 35 pounds, shelter staffers took brand-new images of her and published them on the shelter’s website, explaining that she was crate-trained, well-mannered and friendly around other dogs. As time went on and Vanessa’s fur ended up being speckled with gray, rescue center employees continued to publish about her, stating senior dogs can make great pets.
Still, there were no takers.
Torres has 75 workers, and she said a few of them regularly take dogs briefly into their houses. About 6 months back, she chose to take Vanessa out of the shelter and send her home with a staffer, wanting to offer the elderly canine more convenience while still attempting to position her for adoption.
“As she was aging, we wanted her to be in a home environment instead of a kennel,” she said. “She’s been doing well, but it wasn’t a permanent solution.”
Senior dogs are typically the last to be adoptedTorres said, so last month she chose once again to publish about Vanessa on Facebook.
“We don’t know how Vanessa has been overlooked all these years, but it’s her time to shine now!” Torres composed. “Please be the one who brings Vanessa into their life before she has to spend another year here.”
After 11 years, individuals lastly began noticing Vanessa.
Since Mitchell was among the very first to get in touch with the shelter and she had actually embraced dogs from Villalobos previously, “we knew she’d be a great person to take her,” Torres said.
Torres informed Mitchell fortunately, and she said she will send out a shelter employee to drive the dog about 18 hours to Mitchell’s brand-new Delaware home in a number of weeks.
Mitchell, who lives alone, said she has constantly had a soft area for “old lady pit bull dogs.” She said she found out about Villalobos from a friend 9 years back, then began seeing “Pit Bulls & Parolees.” She idea Vanessa would take pleasure in hanging out in her large yard in rural Delaware, she said.
“My dogs are my family, and after a stressful shift, I love to come home and watch them run around and dig holes while I relax on the patio,” Mitchell said. “I’m looking forward to adding Vanessa to the bunch and spoiling her rotten.”
If Vanessa chooses she’d rather be a small dog or hang out on the couch, that’s likewise great with Mitchell.
“I just want to make her final years the best years she’s ever known,” she said. “Vanessa has definitely earned it.”
