A senior dog has been spending her days at the shelter watching everyone who passes by in the hope that the next person might take her home.
Lassie’s story first came to light courtesy of Giana Sabatino, a shelter worker at the Providence Animal Center in Pennsylvania.
In a video shared to Sabatino’s TikTok account, giana_sabatino, Lassie can be seen watching on from her bed as people pass by her enclosure. According to Sabatino, Lassie “watches everyone who passes by her hoping they will pick her.” Sadly, that hasn’t happened just yet.
Maybe she’s just tired, given her advancing years, but Lassie cuts a forlorn figure on the video, lying in her bed showing little in the way of energy. That’s not entirely surprising though, given everything she has been through.
“Our sweet Lassie came from a shelter in Kentucky. She’s a very sweet 10-year-old senior,” Sabatino told Newsweek. “She was likely a puppy mill dog.”
Staff quickly realized that last part when Lassie stayed in the shelter’s puppy room for two weeks. Under Pennsylvania state law, any adult dog or puppy entering the system has to be quarantined for two weeks.
That might have been difficult for some, but Lassie was different. “She must have had puppies herself because when we were doing the puppies intake exams we had to show her each puppy after or she got upset,” Sabatino said.
Lassie the 10-year-old shelter dog. The senior dog sits and watches other pups get adopted while she stays behind.
giana_sabatino/Providence Animal Center
Sadly, senior dogs like Lassie can often struggle to get adopted.
A previous study by the website Priceonomics based on adoption data from Petfinder revealed that 68.2 percent of senior dogs listed on the website ended up finding a home compared with 95 percent of puppies.
There are plenty of positives to having a senior dog like Lassie though. For one thing, she’s pretty well trained. “She kept her kennel super clean and always used a pee pad and she likes soft beds and plushies,” Sabatino said.
However, anyone looking to adopt her needs to go in with their eyes open. Lassie has a catalog of ailments that, while manageable, require a caring and patient hand.
“She currently has Lyme disease, heartworm, arthritis and dental issues,” Sabatino said. “When she was spayed they did a mass removal from her mammary gland. She has poor eyesight but her hearing isn’t too bad.”
But Lassie is a sweet, affectionate dog who would undoubtedly light up the life of anyone willing to give her the love and care she deserves. Sabatino already has an idea in mind of what would represent Lassie’s ideal forever home.
“She would do best with a quiet, calm home with not a lot of commotion happening where she can live her golden years,” she said.
Anyone who thinks they might be able to provide that is being urged the get in touch with Providence Animal Center so that the next person who walks past Lassie ends up being the one who takes her home.
