Abandoned dog slept on former owner’s recliner on curb

DETROIT -- He has a couple of puppy teeth still intact and a broken leg, and judging by the ribs poking out of his soft brown fur hadn’t been fed in quite awhile, CBS Detroit reports.

Terri Looby saw him perched on a broken recliner among the belongings of his former family on a curb in the area of Redford, a Detroit suburb. It was snowing, and Metro Detroit was in the midst of a deep freeze.

“He was all curled up as tight as he could get,” said Looby, a volunteer with the Detroit Animal Welfare Group, or DAWG. “We got out of the car, he lifted his head, I started going over towards him and I saw the tail wagging.

“I used baby talk, I said ‘come on buddy, you’re OK. He came towards me and just started licking my face.”

Eventually, he jumped into the car where she had a chicken patty waiting for him. She called him Ollie.

“He looked at it, then looked at us and I said ‘it’s OK, take it.’ He waited until we said it was OK to take it,” Looby recounted.

Looby had been on the hunt for a dog on her lunch break after hearing a rumor that a small dog was running around the neighborhood loose. She couldn’t find the little dog who had been described, and instead found Ollie.

“He’s a mix, pit bull, lab, what breed, definitely the biggest lover. All he wanted to do was kiss us. It was our thank you kisses,” she said.

The lady across the street started yelling out the door that she had called another group and no one had gotten the dog. She told Looby the owners had left, possibly after eviction, and had returned once to take the small dog they had left behind.

Ollie was left alongside the trash on the curb.

“He was just waiting for his family to come back,” Looby said. “He got up on that chair and stayed out of the snow. It was very heartbreaking.”

It wasn’t his first day outside. The neighbor estimated he’d been out there a week or a little longer, but the dog was so emaciated that it was obvious he hadn’t been fed for awhile before he was left behind. 

“He’s only a year to a year-and-a-half old,” Looby said.

A trip to the vet revealed the dog had a broken leg. Ollie is now in foster care and waiting for surgery to fix his leg.

“He’s doing fabulous, he’s doing awesome right now, she has three little pugs, but he loves their bed and doesn’t realize he doesn’t fit in it,” Looby said. “He’s with a teenager, and her friends all came over and spoiled him and loved him. He soaked it up.”

The rescue group is unsure if it would be possible to charge the owners with anything, and since they were renters, no one knows where they went.

A fundraising page DAWG set up to help pay for Ollie’s surgery surpassed it’s $2,500 goal, pulling in $4,245 by Friday afternoon.