“As they were freeing him from the hair, his body relaxed. He started showing affection to the volunteer holding him and we started to see a bit more of his personality come out.”
For far too long, little Timberly was kept outside in the middle of the cold Chicago winter. His mom had fallen incredibly ill, and she thought it would be best to keep Timberly outside so that he wouldn’t somehow make her sicker. After a local cat feeder noticed Timberly shivering in the cold and contacted The Anti-Cruelty Society, rescuers got involved, and were able to convince the woman to surrender Timberly into their care.
When Timberly arrived at the shelter, the first thing rescuers noticed about him was his matted fur. He was completely covered in thick, tangled mats, and it seemed as if the poor dog hadn’t been groomed in years — or maybe ever.
“He couldn’t move much and was wary of new people,” Colette Bradley, of The Anti-Cruelty Society, told The Dodo. “He was completely covered in mats of hair and he could only see out of one eye due to an overgrowth of hair. He moved very slowly and couldn’t walk very far.”
Rescuers knew they needed to free Timberly from his fur prison as quickly as possible, so they set about shaving him — and soon realized his mats were even more severe than they initially thought.
“They got his head and half of his back freed from the mats, but found a growth close to the skin and determined at that time that it was best for a professional groomer to continue to work on him,” Bradley said. “The next day, one of our volunteers that is a professional groomer came in and, with the assistance of another volunteer and staff members, he was able to finish shaving him and clean up the areas that had been shaved the day prior.”
Overall, it took several hours to shave Timberly completely, and by the time the job was done, around 3 pounds of fur had been shaved off of his tiny body — and underneath it all was a completely different dog.
“He was very happy when the mats came off,” Bradley said. “As they were freeing him from the hair, his body relaxed. He started showing affection to the volunteer holding him and we started to see a bit more of his personality come out.”
Once he was finally comfortable in his own body again, Timberly began to warm up to his rescuers and his new surroundings. Due to being neglected for so long, he’s still getting used to being touched, but once he gets comfortable with you, he loves belly rubs and ear scratches more than anything in the world. His personality is coming out more and more every day, and his rescuers are so excited for the day when he can finally go off to a forever family and start his new life.
“He’s come a long way since he first arrived and we’re excited to continue to see him progress,” Bradley said.