A senior dog has spent close to a year in a North Carolina shelter, having arrived at the facility in the most heartbreaking of circumstances.
Avery Andolina, a volunteer at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Care & Control, first introduced followers on her Instagram @dogdaysofclt to Chewy a year ago.
"Chewy is still waiting for his forever home, even though he's the best boy," Andolina told Newsweek. "His story is pretty sad."
It's a story that began in January 2024, when he was found abandoned as a stray outside another shelter.
The circumstances that led his previous owner to take this decision are unclear. "I'm not sure why he was abandoned, but it's not uncommon to see senior dogs abandoned like that," Andolina said.
Chewy is 9, and had some masses on his body that required testing when he was first found. That has been cited as one possible reason for him being there. "I think maybe some people get scared that health issues may pop up," Andolina said.
There would be one further twist in the tale of Chewy, though. When staff at the shelter checked his microchip, they discovered he had been adopted as a puppy from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Care & Control.
Now, nine years later, he was without a home. In that scenario, the only logical step was to send him to the shelter he had come from and hope that whoever adopted him to begin with came to reclaim Chewy. But they never did.
Andolina said Chewy struggled to adjust to life in the shelter. "He was so depressed," she said. "He would barely get off his cot and eat. He honestly seemed like he didn't have much time left."
Worse still, Chewy was struggling to drum up much adoption interest. "He's a great dog, but I think he struggled to find an adopter because he's a senior and he's massive … like 100 pounds of love," Andolina said.
But then something happened that helped Chewy to see he had so much more life to live: he was fostered. Though it would be impossible to provide for each and every dog, studies have highlighted how much shelter dogs benefit from one-on-one care.
In 2018, a study published in Applied Animal Behavior Science found that just 15 minutes of one-on-one petting was enough to provide shelter dogs with a measurable boost to their overall well-being.
Andolina is a keen advocate for fostering shelter dogs. "Fosters are so critical because they help us figure out what a dog is like outside the shelter," she said.
Andolina added how Chewy seemed like he was "on his deathbed" until a move to a foster home saw him transformed. "He was like a new dog," Andolina said. "He's been in foster care for a while now, and they say he's aged backward and is happy and healthy."
The hope now is that, with his newfound confidence and contentment, Chewy can finally find the forever home he once had but lost. Andolina has every confidence in him doing exactly that.
"He'd do great in a variety of homes," she said. "He is great with other dogs and just wants to chill on the couch."
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