Zully Vasquez Ventura cringed the moment she turned onto a road leading to what she calls the dumping grounds in her Cleveland, Texas, community.
She caught a glimpse of one of the most emaciated dogs she’d ever seen, hit the brakes and jumped out of her car.
“She was really, really weak,” Ventura told The Dodo. “She would walk five or six steps, and she would hit the ground because she was not strong enough to walk. She had no food, no water, not even shelter from the sun.”
The starving pup was one of thousands of dogs Ventura has found in Colony Ridge, a neighborhood about an hour northeast of Houston, notorious for its high number of abandoned and neglected dogs.
Ventura approached the dog and was shocked; despite her deplorable condition, she had a loving disposition.
“She was, like, the most friendly dog ever, she was wagging her tail,” Ventura said. “It was like a stab in the heart thinking how this even happened to her.”
Despite all the dogs Ventura has helped, the sadness she felt for this neglected pup brought her to her knees in the middle of the road.
“I started crying and crying,” Ventura said. “I called my husband and said, ‘I don’t know why I keep coming to these streets, I know what I’m gonna find. There has to be something wrong with me.’ I was so hurt to find this dog like that.”
Ventura’s husband assured her she was in the right place at the right time. “He said, ‘I think anybody who has a compassionate heart like yours would feel really bad to find a dog like that, and if it’s in their hands to help that they would,’” Ventura recalled.
With those words of encouragement, Ventura posted about the dog on social media. Within 20 minutes, someone else with a compassionate heart responded, Diann Thomason from Three Little Pitties Rescue.
“When I saw Zully crying in the video, and then I saw the dog, it sounds so cliche, but I’m just like, ‘I gotta get this dog,’” Thomason told The Dodo. “It was heartbreaking.”
Thomason raced over to pick up the dog, who gave her a kiss when they met. She named her Tabitha and rushed her to the Three Little Pitties Rescue medical clinic.
“I thought she was going to die, I really did,” Thomason said. “She’s standing there at the vet clinic, all bony and hardly any fur, but her tail never stopped wagging. That’s what I love about dogs, they’re so forgiving. It just astounds me. She was just like, the happiest thing ever.”
Tabitha had a challenging road ahead; she was malnourished and suffering from severe mange. “I vividly remember petting her, and I could feel every bone in her body,” Thomason said. “When my neighbor first saw her, she was like, ‘Man, that’s the most pitiful-looking dog I’ve ever seen you bring in.’”
But with Thomason’s care, Tabitha’s beauty soon shone both inside and out. “Seeing her fur come back, it really was amazing,” Thomason said.
The rescue posted Tabitha for adoption, and an applicant in Vancouver seemed like a perfect fit. The only problem was that Tabitha didn’t like crates and was afraid of cars. After all Tabitha had been through, Thomason wanted Tabitha’s journey to go smoothly, so she drove her all the way from Texas to Washington state. That’s where Tabitha’s adopter met her.
“She comes in with all these treats, and Tabitha, she has her full-body wag, and she just goes up to her,” Thomason said. “It was perfect.”
Seeing the video of the moment Tabitha met her adopter brought tears to Ventura’s eyes again, but this time tears of joy.
“This reminds me there is hope,” Ventura said. “It gives me strength. God put me here for a reason: to help all these dogs. To see her go to a new family makes me feel like it’s all worth it.”