Animal abuse is always awful to see. It’s happening across the whole world every day but it’s not something most of us see in everyday life and it’s always shocking. But this week, we had one of the worst animal abuse cases we’ve ever seen come into Happy Doggo Land.

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Daily Whatsapps with animal emergencies

Every day, we get multiple messages from people telling us that a dog needs emergency help. It might sound callous but 90% of the time, it’s not actually urgent. It’s a street dog who has ticks or a limp. While we’ll always try to help, with lots of really sick dogs at the land, not that many actually make it straight to the top of our list. 

But then sometimes, we get a message that shocks us so much that we know we need to act immediately. That’s what happened with the Whatsapp that Niall received last week. The images he was sent shocked all of us to our core. The dogs in the pictures didn’t even look like dogs.

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Dogs living in tiny cages

We immediately dropped what we were doing and ran out to the location where the dogs were being kept. We honestly wondered if they’d still be alive when we got there… 

Turns out this is a tough little pair. Not only were they still alive but they’d been surviving in awful conditions for at least 3 years. They were living in their own mess and the only reason they were still alive was because people had been sneaking in to give them water and some scraps of food. But it was clear that while they were surviving, they were not thriving. 

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Their fur was matted, one of them had a serious eye issue, their water was green, and there was no food to speak of.

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We had to bust them out

With dogs this small, you’d think that getting them out of their cages would be easy. But the cages were all they’d ever known and they were terrified of us. Humans probably hadn’t been overly kind to them in their lives so that was understandable. 

When we got them out of the cages, we could see the full horror of their situation. Their fur was so matted that it was like cement, we felt sure that one would lose an eye and the smell coming from them was so bad even Niall was gagging. 

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Straight to the vet

The first thing we needed to do was get them to the vet. Often dogs can look ok and have underlying conditions. If the way these dogs looked was anything to go by, there was a good chance they were actually really unwell.

The first thing to do was get them groomed as we couldn’t really see what was going on under there. We named the Pheonix and Faith and realized they were so terrified we’d need to sedate them to do any grooming. For three hours, Sybille and our vets worked together to clean them up as best they could. 

Even then, they still looked terrible but we at least could see what was going on. They both had skin conditions caused by the matting and little Faith’s eye was filled with maggots. Once that first hurdle was over, we brought them back to Happy Doggo land to help them calm down.

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Their injuries were more than skin deep

Although they were definitely feeling better physically, we knew they had a long way to go mentally. They were both wary of humans and Faith in particular was terrified of us. Being in so much pain we weren’t surprised. 

Back at Happy Doggo land, the team took it in turns to sit with the pair, feeding them tiny bits of food and moving in closer. Phoenix didn’t take long to warm up and was soon cuddled up in our arms. Faith took a little longer but she’s now happy to be picked up and held.

As always with traumatized dogs, they’re not out of the water yet. While they’re happy enough with us, they’re still nervous and probably will be for a while. Meeting new people will be difficult for them and we won’t know how they’ll get on in new environments for a while. 

However, we know that these little beauties will absolutely thrive in the right home. They’re clearly built to be little lap dogs and when they’re feeling better, they’ll be looking for a lovely family together.

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