Dog Quietly Waits on Discarded Mattress After Owners Leave Him Behind With Trash

Dog Quietly Waits on Discarded Mattress After Owners Leave Him Behind With Trash
(Illustration - Shutterstock)
6/17/2019
Updated:
3/11/2020

Imagine you walk down the street and see a house for rent. In front of the house on the sidewalk, the former tenants have left behind everything they didn’t want to take with them, including an old mattress and some furniture. There’s one more thing they didn’t care enough to take with them: their dog.

This is what happened a few years ago in Detroit, where the founder of Detroit Youth & Dog Rescue, known as Mike Diesel, saw a Facebook post about a dog sleeping in the front yard of an empty home.

As Diesel told the Detroit News, when he arrived, neighbors told him that the family had been gone for a while, some claiming a week whereas others said it had been a whole month! “They came back one time, took the belongings that they chose to keep, unfortunately that wasn’t Boo,” Diesel said to WXYZ in Detroit. The neighbors had given the dog, a pit bull terrier mix, which he named Boo, enough food and water to survive.

One of Diesel’s friends who accompanied him to the scene, Liz Marie, posted pictures showing the sad pup on Facebook. “This picture absolutely breaks my heart, I am literally in tears. Meet Boo, this beautiful boy was left behind with the trash and belongings when the family moved out. He stayed right by their stuff and never left it, confused and lonely.”

Both of them could see that Boo was refusing to go anywhere until his family came back to him. “That’s why Boo was staying close to the belongings and the mattress he possibly slept on and the smells he was comfortable with and knew,” Diesel told the Detroit News.

From the time that Diesel discovered the dog, he had to spend nearly two days gaining Boo’s trust using bribery material like McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches. The dog was obviously upset and didn’t want to stop guarding what he thought were his family’s possessions while he waited for them to come back, which of course would never happen.

Finally, Diesel managed to gain the dog’s trust, “getting him to know my voice, getting him to know that I wasn’t going to hurt him, getting him to know that he could trust humans again,” as he told WXYZ. Diesel got close enough to put a lead on Boo and took him in to the Groesbeck Animal Hospital, where they found he had contracted heartworm.

The Animal Hospital staff were really impressed with how sweet Boo was despite all that he had been through. One of those who treated Boo told WXYZ, “he is wonderful, you would think that he would be scared and fearful of people, but he came in here wagging his tail.”

When Boo went into foster, Diesel continued to check up on him and was happy to see that he was recovering so well. While Detroit Youth & Dog Rescue weren’t able to find an adoptive home, Boo’s foster mom loved him so much that she decided to keep him!

An incredible story that shows the true character of dogs and how much we have to learn from them. As Diesel put it to WXYZ, “dogs are amazingly loyal. If we could get human beings to show anywhere near that much compassion, we'd be living in a much better world.”