Janice Roop lives near Mammoth, but she drove to Tucson to look at the adoptable dogs at Pima Animal Care Center after viewing them online.
“When you’re looking at their sweet little faces online and they look like they’re sad or they’re going through a lot, you want to go down and look at them and spend time with them,” she said.
That’s how she and her husband came to adopt Peppy, a young Chihuahua who was covered in stitches. Considered a special needs dog, it appeared he may have been attacked by a bigger animal.
The couple adopted the pup and stopped for a hamburger so they could spend some time alone with him before arriving home to their other animals.
It wasn’t until later that Roop had time to read Peppy’s medical records — he had been rescued from a garbage can in a south-side alley in October. The 5-pound pup had been tied in a garbage bag with just his head sticking out and was so injured he could barely move or breathe.
That’s when the tears came, Roop said. “I can not believe people are like that.”
A man searching for aluminum cans found the gravely injured dog and called PACC. The animal care officers who responded alerted the shelter’s medical team that they had a dog needing immediate attention. X-rays showed that both of his lungs were nearly collapsed. He had bite wounds on his neck, and he was in shock, said Karen Hollish, PACC’s development director.
Roop, who recently adopted two other Chihuahuas, believes Peppy barked to draw attention — which saved his life.
“I feel very lucky to get him,” she said.
“It took him about a week to get that sparkle in his eyes again,” Roop said. “He’s very playful — he’s very happy and very loving.”
Peppy has put on some weight and looks much healthier, she said. Still, the dog is so small the couple stays with him whenever they go outside “to make sure the owls and hawks don’t come down.”
Roop said she appreciates that PACC has changed its philosophy in recent years and is moving toward being a no-kill facility.
The couple may move closer to Tucson, and if they do Roop said she’d like to foster special needs animals to give them a better chance at finding loving homes.
“There’s a lot more dogs in there — missing eyes, missing legs,” she said. “It doesn’t make them any less loving. It doesn’t make them any less of a dog.”
