We try to show positive stories at Happy Doggo Land. Street dogs who have gotten better and found their forever homes, been healed and went back to live with their pack, or who have lived amazing lives. 

‍But sometimes a dog comes in and we’re not sure if they’ll ever have a happy ending. 

One of those cases was a little girl who came in this week. We’d found Stella with a piece of string tied round her neck that was slowly strangling her. It appears that someone had put it on her when she was a puppy and as she’d grown, it had grown tighter and tighter. On top of that, Stella had clearly been mistreated and was terrified of humans. 

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Shut down Stella

When we rescued Stella, we had to catch her and put her in a bag to get to the vets. She tried to bite us multiple times but we thought she might just be scared. However, after she had to be sedated at the vets and spent her first days at the land cowering and trying to bite everyone, we realized it might be a little more serious.

Not only was she not interacting with us, she wasn’t showing interest in the other dogs, and she wasn’t eating her food. Most importantly, we couldn’t get near her. With a horrific wound on her neck from the piece of string, we needed to get close to her to clean it. 

But little Stella was stuck to the corner of her little suite and whenever anyone went near her, she’d try to bite and attack them. While this wasn’t a process we could rush, we also couldn’t give her the room she wanted. She needed treatment.

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Patience was key...

Over the last few days, members of the Happy Doggo team have taken it in turns to spend hours with Stella, just sitting in her little suite. Niall sat with her on Friday, slowly moving closer to her in the least threatening way he could. Lana and Jamie spent hours on Sunday playing music and just being there, and everyone else has spent any spare moment they could, slowly edging closer and showing her that humans actually aren’t that threatening.

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A breakthrough!

To start with Stella wouldn’t let anyone near her. Whenever you reached a hand towards her, she’d snap at you or basically try to melt into the wall. But some changes soon came. She’d accept people being in her kennel. She’d allow you to touch her with a blanket. She’d eat a little food.

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Then one morning over the weekend, Stella ended up when Niall was cleaning out her kennel, she made a run for it. There wasn’t really anywhere for her to escape to outside the land but she made it to one of the play areas and seemed really keen to play with Rusty and Libby, two of our sweetest dogs. Having her in with them seemed to push through some barriers. She just wanted to play!

After all, Stella is just a puppy and being around some happy, friendly dogs brought her out of her shell. She’d allow people to get closer to her, emboldened by Rusty and Libby’s easy-going natures, and soon Lana could touch her without her panicking.

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A long way to go

Right now, she’s still pretty wary of humans but she is allowing us to get closer to her all the time. That’s not only good for her long-term future - we’re not even considering what her options will look like right now but if she hadn’t been able to adapt to humans, she’d have been a bit stuck - it’s also good for her health.

Her neck wound is one of the worst we’ve ever seen and if she wouldn’t let us clean it, there’s a high chance it would have gotten infected. It’s still really hot here in Thailand with lots of flies who all wanted to get to that wound.

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Now Stella has a good chance at a great life. Her wound is beginning to heal up, and with us now being able to care for it better, that progress should speed up significantly. Everyone keeps asking if we’ll get her adopted but she has a long way to go both physically and mentally before we get to that stage. Right now, her ability to get closer to us and the fact her physical wounds are healing are all positive signs. 

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We can’t wait to see what the future holds for her!

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