Abandoned Senior Dog's Complete Turnaround After Finding New Family Is Tear-Jerking

It was the late comedian George Carlin who famously said, "When you buy a pet, you know it's going to end badly. You just bought a small tragedy." Indeed, a common lament among animal lovers is that pets' lives are too short compared to humans' lives. But that fact didn't stop one man from bringing home a sweet senior dog with cancer, deafness, and blindness in one eye, believed to have mere days or weeks left to live.

In a YouTube video published by The Dodo that's been viewed more than 753,000 times, Zach Skow, co-founder of Marley's Mutts Dog Rescue in Tehachapi, California, is shown bringing home shelter dog Henry to live out the remainder of his days in peace and surrounded by love. "I saw them bringing him out of his kennel, and he didn't want to walk. He couldn't hear. He couldn't see out of one eye," Skow says in the video voiceover. "You could just tell he was really confused. I remember the expression on his face. You could just feel his pain."

After spending time with Skow's loving family, and after an operation to remove the cancerous growths, something unexpected happens. Henry starts to perk up and walk — then gallop — around the yard, acting excited whenever he sees Skow. Weeks pass, and Henry keeps getting livelier. "He was just totally reborn," Skow adds. When it becomes obvious that Henry doesn't require hospice care but instead needs a new forever home, Skow begins to accept adoption applications for the senior doggo.

Senior dog Henry's story is not only one of resilience but also one of pure acceptance. "He's going to go out of this world surrounded by love, which is all we could ever ask for. He has made our lives richer while we've had him. And he's going to make the lives of those who adopt him richer," Zach Skow says in the voiceover at the end of The Dodo's YouTube video.

"He had much life to live and so much love to give...he just needed someone who cared about him," one viewer wrote in the video's comments. Many commenters criticized Henry's original owner for abandoning the elderly dog to a shelter, but others questioned whether the owner had passed away, become too sick to care for Henry properly, or been unable to afford Henry's cancer treatment. Veterinary care is one of the hidden costs of caring for a pet that many people forget about when trying to find the right dog or cat, and a cancer diagnosis is definitely one of the most expensive vet bills you can get if you own a pet. Some owners, when faced with a vet bill they can't afford, have to make the heartbreaking decision to surrender their beloved animal.

Henry's new family took him home in March 2021, and he died in June 2022. One viewer of The Dodo's video succinctly captured all of our feelings about this outcome for Henry: "I'm happy to know that he had over a year of love and joy before he passed away."