Shadow Found Her Forever Home!
Thank you Lori for sharing Shadow's story with us.

Lori Wrote:

"Even though we don't live in PA, I wanted to share our rescue story with you. We had 2 huskies that we raised from 7 weeks of age and in September of 1998, we lost our oldest husky to cancer (he was 8). Our younger husky (6) was in mourning as was the rest of the family. In April of 1999, we decided to check our local shelters and rescue sites. It was in a shelter that we found a sweet little girl. She was such a beauty and a real lover (kisser too). Her name is Shadow and she is about 4 years old. We decided to take the chance and met with her for over an hour and than brought our beloved husky from home in to meet her. Kiska and Shadow hit it off, although she did have a little bit of an attitude (even though she's smaller she tries to rule him). So we filled out all the necessary paperwork and met with the shelter staff. They disclosed to us that yes she was a rescue.

Apparently a family purchased her and another husky as puppies then deserted them in their backyard, never allowing them with the family or in the house. The male dog was being released to foster care as he had some temperament problems while Shadow was easily adoptable as she got along with other animals.

When we brought her home, the first thing we did was give her a bath as she was a real mess with a lot of dried dog-doo in her fur as well as other yukie stuff. Since she was never in a house before, she wasn't sure what to make of the house nor the bath but soon discovered that the warm water and the weight of all the dirt coming off felt good and actually leaned into the water. Once she was clean and dry, we discovered that you could see every bone in her, which concerned us. We made an appointment to have her checked by our vet. She was underweight by about 25 pounds but otherwise in good health with just a slight sinus infection. We also discovered she is extremely afraid of men and after observing her, our vet came to the conclusion she was terrorized by a male which is why she is so afraid of men now. We also came to the conclusion as to why she was so under weight is she had to fight the other dog for whatever food she could get.

We have had her now over a year and she has blossomed into a beautiful, loving, affectionate member of our family. She is no longer terrified of the refrigerator, vacuum cleaner, hairdryer, etc. She loves being with us and has learned so much in this time, like how to snuggle next to you, how to sit on command, what a leash is, what treats are, what toys are, etc. The chance we took on adopting her was well worth it. If we ever lose another one of our team to cancer, we will definitely look at adopting again.

The lesson we learned is that no matter what the background is they came from, with love and attention they all respond with love back. Here is her picture and for the record we are located in Washington State and our story has also been published on their rescue site as well. We recently took her back to the shelter we adopted her from and the staff was still there and a couple of them remembered her and cried when they saw how loving and affectionate she was now. She didn't hesitate to give them kisses."