Rescued dog seeks loving, lifetime home with family

PALMER — Considering the state the black lab mix was in when he came to a dog rescue group a few months back, volunteers there are amazed at how far he’s come.

“He cowered, he didn’t come to meet us. He didn’t know what it meant to be a pet,” said Angie Lewis with Alaska Dog and Puppy Rescue. “If you put your hand up to him he would just cower and try to slink away.”

She said that for the first five years of his life the dog, Cass, was chained to a bed. Which meant that he lived, essentially, under the bed. That was his entire world. He arrived into the arms of his rescuers covered in his own feces.

Cass came to the rescue group along with a handful of other dogs a man left behind at a Wasilla-area home. Lewis said she’s not really sure what the man’s story is, but thinks he may have psychological issues that wound up getting him taken away from his home.

“It was a neighbor who called us and told us the story,” she said. “She said he had been taken away. She brought the dogs to us basically.”

Whatever happened, the man is out of the picture. Which, to hear Lewis tell it, is good for Cass.

“It’s taken him awhile to get used to people at all because whenever he got out from under the bed he got hit or kicked,” Lewis said.

His harsh life certainly left its mark, Lewis said. Cass has what might be burn marks on his face and neck. He’s got a scar from the chain that was around his neck. And he has trouble walking. Lewis said that she has to help him into her station wagon. But that he can walk at all is kind of surprising.

“He didn’t even really know how to walk,” when he came in, Lewis said. “If we human beings were kept under a bed we’d be hard pressed to get up and do what you’ve got to do.”

But Cass is friendly and ready to go to a good home.

“He’s friendly, he just takes a little while to warm up. We’ve had him for a few months to really work with him,” she said.

In an e-mail, she described Cass as sweet, loving and trusting.

“We just think that he’s ready now to go to a forever home and we want to do whatever we can to make that happen,” Lewis said.

The adoption fee, she said, is $120, which offsets some of the cost of the medical care he’s received, including being neutered, vaccinated, microchipped and some blood work.

“We wanted to make sure he was healthy,” Lewis said.

Alaska Dog and Puppy Rescue doesn’t adopt out animals unless they’ve been spayed or neutered, which is part of why the adoption fee is as high as it is. That didn’t used to be the case — the group just used to let the dogs go so long as the new owners promised to have them spayed or neutered.

“Inevitably we wound up getting back the babies of all of these dogs. We said, ‘that’s it, we’re going to start charging more to offset some of the costs of some of this,’” Lewis said.

Anyone interested in adopting Cass can call Alaska Dog and Puppy Rescue at 745-7030. He’ll be attending the group’s adoption clinics every Saturday until he’s adopted from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the group’s headquarters on the Palmer-Wasilla Highway in the Trinity Barns next to R & W Burger. To learn more about the group, head to alaskadogandpuppyrescue.com.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.