Literally a year and a day ago, my partner and I adopted a puppy a young couple found in a remote part of the city, under a car, filled with ticks, bite scars and clear starvation signs. No discernable breed, mixed as they come. The couple took it to the vet, nursed it back to health and intended to keep him, but they owned a very territorial dog that kept nipping at the puppy, so they decided to give him up for adoption on a popular website down here.
Claudia, my partner, saw it minutes after they posted (she spent HOURS A DAY looking at pictures of potential adoptees, even though we live in an apartment and weren't home most of the day.... until the pandemic, that is). She sent a message not expecting much, the puppy was freaking cute and so many people were adopting that it was actually kind of tough to get one.
Much to our surprise the young couple responded almost instantly, and before I knew it an appointment for us to meet the puppy in a park near our apartment was set for two days later. Max (his name was already Max, a name we had literally considered for a potential human baby) was scared as fuck that day, and the young couple told us their older dog had just straight up peed on the puppy on a clearly territorial move and he was getting more and more aggressive. That's when something clicked in me as I held the cute af bag of bones in my arms and I decided he was not going back to live with that older aggressive dog. He was staying with me.
And he has since.
The vet saw clear signs of starvation, Max had clearly not even sucked milk from his mom, some of his puppy teeth were hollow and malformed. He weighed 2 kilos (4ish lbs) when we got him, but apparently he fit inside a sock when he was found a month earlier so he was already growing fast, though. The vet still though he was going to be a small to medium dog, she said. He will definitely fit in our apartment, we thought.
Fucker is now almost 35kg (77ish lbs) and his front paws get up to my chest when he stands on his hind legs (I'm 6feet).
It's been one year and I don't remember my life before him.