Stories of cruelty to animals stagger the mind. What leads humans to treat a harmless creature so mercilessly often goes maddeningly unanswered. All that can ever be hoped for is a happy ending.
In Valdosta, Georgia, there appears to be a happy ending.
Jim and Tim are a pair of Border Collie puppies who just want to be loved. And love is what they desperately received last week, after being found burned alive and left in a roadside ditch by a concerned citizen and taken to the Lowndes County Animal Shelter for treatment.
“The shelter had taken them in, bathed them, and thought they might have a skin issue, but the next morning they noticed something was changing,” Debbie Runker of the Lowndes County Humane Society told the Valdosta Daily Times. “They had the vet look at them and realized they had been burned.”
The dogs were taken to a veterinarian for treatment, and during the examination one of the dogs’ ears and part of a tail fell off due to the injuries.
But Jim and Tim’s foster mom, Nikki Nelson, told WCTV that the pups are showing few ill-effects.
“They act like any other puppy. They’re not timid towards people or other dogs. They don’t act like they’ve had a lifetime, a short lifetime, of abuse.”
While the case of these two stricken animals remains under investigation — with years of jail time a possibility should the perpetrators be caught — Jim and Tim are not only well on their way to recovery, but could soon find themselves in a loving home, where they belong.
“We have been swarmed with people wanting to adopt them,” Runker said. “We are taking applications for consideration, but we are not going to do anything with them until they are healthy, neutered, and have their vaccinations.”
Anyone wishing to make financial contributions to cover the cost of the puppies’ recovery can visit humanesocietyofvaldosta.org.
Via Valdosta Daily Times and WCTV
Read more news about dogs:
- TLC Rescue Founder Saves 21 Foster Dogs From Fire
- ‘In Dog We Trust’ Works for Us on a Rug, But Not for a Florida Sheriff
- This Dog Rides Bus to the Dog Park Alone
About the author: Jeff Goldberg is a freelance writer in Quincy, Mass. A former editor for MLB.com and sportswriter for the Hartford Courant who covered the University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball team (Huskies!) and the Boston Red Sox, Jeff has authored two books on the UConn women: Bird at the Buzzer (2011) and Unrivaled (2015). He lives with his wife, Susan, and their rescue pup, Rocky, an Italian Greyhuahua/Jack Russell mix from a foster home in Tennessee, hence the name Rocky (as in Rocky Top).
