“I wasn’t sure if she was even alive …”
Aly Mac was just about to leave her house to take her dogs for a walk. But as she stepped outside, something caught her eye. A white ball of fluff was huddled in the grass of her yard in Los Angeles, California.
Mac, who volunteers as a foster carer for Love Leo Rescue, approached the dog to check if she was breathing.
“I wasn’t sure if she was even alive because I kept speaking to her and she wasn’t budging,” Mac told The Dodo. “But then she finally started to open her eyes. I could tell she was very tired and weak and depleted.”
Mac quickly put the other dogs back into her house. Then she got a plate of food and cup of water and offered them to the dog.
“[I wanted to] test her and see if I could lure her inside to my balcony, where I could keep her safe and fed,” Mac said. “Obviously, I canceled my plans immediately so I could help her.”
The dog suddenly perked up at the smell of food, rousing from her sleep. “Once she got a taste of the food, she ate it all up and took a few sips of water and then laid back down on the ground,” Mac said. “I have a slip leash that I was able to toss around her head as soon as she lifted her head up.”
Mac was eventually able to get the tired pup inside with more food.
The dog — a Great Pyrenees with scars on her body — looked like she had been used for breeding. Mac and the team at Love Leo Rescue theorized that her previous owners discarded her when she was no longer of use.
Mac took her to the vet that same day. Not surprisingly, the dog didn’t have a microchip. But she did have a number of parasites, including tapeworm and fleas.
“Once I got her home, I gave her a luxurious flea bath,” Mac said. “She was not happy about getting a bath, but once we got her in, she dealt with it. And I’m pretty sure she had the best sleep she’d had in a long time.”
But Mac wasn’t able to keep the dog since she already had a full house with her own dog and her foster dog. So Sasha Abelson, the founder of Love Leo Rescue, found another foster carer to take the dog.
They started calling the dog Coconut.
“We got her into a wonderful foster home with a trainer who helped her decompress from her situation and unwind from all that she’d been through,” Abelson told The Dodo.
Meanwhile, Mac’s video of Coconut, which the rescue group had posted on their Instagram page, had gone viral.
“Apparently it touched a lot of people across the country and the world,” Abelson said. “We got emails and views and likes on it and people wanting to adopt her.”
Soon, the rescue group received the perfect adoption application for Coconut. And they accepted. Coconut is now thriving in her forever home.
“It didn’t take long, because she got so much interest,” Abelson said. “The video really catapulted her into her forever home.”
