Dennis the determined
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Sean of the South
Sean Dietrich
They left him in a dumpster. They just didn’t want him. Simple as that. So they threw him away. Like garbage.
He was six weeks old. They could have taken him anywhere. A church. An adoption center. They could’ve left him on a doorstep, for crying out loud. But they put him in the trash.
When someone found Dennis, he was crying. His furry body was cut up, bloody, from head to foot. Maybe the cuts came from rolling around in a dumpster that contained shards of glass. Or maybe they came from the person who put him here.
No way to know. All anyone knew is that Dennis would probably die.
He was found in South Oxfordshire, England. Someone took him to Blue Cross animal shelter where they cleaned him and bandaged his wounds.
“I didn’t expect him to be so small,” said a shelter worker. “He was absolutely tiny. I’ve never seen a dog of his age quite so little and thin, and with so many injuries…”
Dennis’s little body was weak. He hadn’t eaten in days. He was frightened, and trembling violently. If he would’ve had any fluid in his bladder he would have released it out of fear. But he was too dehydrated to even swallow, let alone tee-tee.
When they washed him, they found more severe wounds beneath his fur. They rushed him to the emergency vet. It was evident, Dennis would probably die. He was too small. Too weak.
Then, the emergency vet discovered something else.
Dennis was blind and deaf.
“His eyes couldn’t focus… and he couldn’t really hear what you were saying, or [figure] out where he was. So, he would sort of go to the corner of the room or try to nestle into you in order to feel safe.”
Blue Cross placed him in a foster home with experts. The fosters had worked with blind dogs before. But Dennis presented a new challenge.
“It was a whole different thing for us to learn. We’ve dealt with deaf puppies, and we’ve dealt with blind puppies, but putting the two together was such a different experience for us and something that we had to learn along the way.”
The fosters started by giving Dennis a great, big, squishy bed. And toys. Lots of toys. Also, they held him a lot, so he could remember their scents.
They taught him cues. Whenever they entered the room, they would tap their feet on the floor so he could feel the vibrations to let him know they were approaching. They gave him space to heal. And it worked. Over time, Dennis got healthy.
“He really just came into his own in foster [care]. As time went on, he became quite confident, and his personality very quickly came out.”
And Dennis had a LOT of personality.
He was fearless, as it turned out. It wasn’t long before he was charging into new environments, bumping around until he learned the layout of each room. Dennis loved to play. Also, he learned to walk, which was something he could barely do before.
He learned many things. How to trust. The fine art of tug-of-war. How to wake people up by barking. Eating the remote. As it turns out, however, Dennis needed no lessons on how to love.
Within 24 days, he captured the heart of a local family who adopted him on the spot.
This Christmas, he will be with his adopted family, living in Derbyshire, the arms of luxury. He will go on walks. He will run. He will play. He will eat amazing things, chew amazing things, and pee on amazing things.
And if, by chance, the person who placed Dennis in that dumpster is reading this, I’d like that person to know something: There are no worthless creatures on this earth. Not Dennis. Not me.
And not even you.
