After 12 years guarding a property, a sweet senior dog is looking for a home – the first in her life. Tina was discarded from the only place she called “home” when she became sick and could no longer guard the property where she lived.
Some people at a neighboring business took her in, but with their office closing and her being sick with mange, Tina faced being returned to the street. That was something dog rescuer Valia Orfanidou could not endure.
“Tina spent the first 12 years of her life looking at the world from inside a fence, guarding a property and barking at everyone who passed by,” describes Valia of Orphan Pet. “After she got sick with mange, she was moved against her will to the other side of the gate, on the street. She became homeless at 12. She wandered for days, getting sicker and sicker, until she entered the offices of a company in the neighborhood and slept there like she had never slept before.”
“Once the office closed, she would have to be returned to the street, and I could not handle that. So I picked her up the same day and she became a SCARS dog,” she writes on YouTube. “She got up and followed me, as if she had been following me all her life, even though she had never met me before. She smelled horribly and she was exhausted. Mange is exhausting. The itch is so horrible that dogs suffer from lack of sleep, because they can’t stop scratching.”
Thankfully, apart from the mange, Tina is healthy. And she’s making up for lost time, despite her age. “She is old and you can tell that she is old. Her legs tremble and she does not have the energy she used to have,” admits Valia. “All she does is sleep, walk, eat and cuddle. She adores people.”
“Whenever we meet people on the street, she follows them asking to be petted, and all she gets is a mixture of rejection and fear. And this is an unbelievably lonely feeling.”
“She is a perfect dog. She is simply perfect,” says Valia. “This video doesn’t really do her any justice, but it might give you an idea of what her soul is made of. Sitting next to her puts a huge smile on my face. When she wags her tail, my heart melts.”