Nobody understood why Benji kept getting returned to the shelter after being adopted. It had been 11 times by now, and all his owners just kept giving obviously fake and weak excuses. Only when the new trainee decided to take Benji home with her did they find out what was actually wrong with Benji. Nobody at the shelter could have predicted this.
Stacy was still shaken from the experience as she was driving back to the shelter. Benji was in the back seat sleeping. Stacy felt horrible, as she had been so sure she could help this poor dog. But now he had to be returned to the shelter for a 12th time. But at least they now knew why. Stacy had called ahead, and there were three other employees waiting for her and Benji to arrive. 11 times Benji had been returned to the shelter, always with an excuse, but they knew that Stacy would tell them the truth. So why was Benji returned to the shelter 11 times? What was wrong with this poor dog, and could they fix it?
By this point, Benji had been at the animal shelter for one five years. He was barely a puppy anymore, but he still very much looked like one. Everybody who came to the shelter to pick immediately fell in love with him and wanted to take him home. So why was poor Benji still here? The truth is that from those one five years, Benji didn’t actually spend that much time in the shelter. If he was present there, it would be at most 2 weeks before he was adopted by somebody. But the thing is that he just kept getting returned by the people who adopted him.
This already started when he was brought into the shelter the first time as only a 3-week old puppy. His first owners had a dog who gave birth to five healthy puppies, but they inexplicably decided to keep four of them, and only Benji was handed over to the shelter without a word of explanation. They put him up for adoption that same day, and the very next day somebody had already come in to adopt him. It wasn’t every day that a shelter would have puppies up for adoption, as mostly older dogs were brought in, so people who saw Benji knew this was a golden chance. The family he was going to seemed to be absolutely perfect — a young married couple with a 5-year-old daughter dying to get a puppy.
Nobody at the shelter expected to ever see Benji again, but this would not turn out to be the case whatsoever. It only took 3 weeks before Benji was returned to the shelter by his new owners. The father had come alone with a happy and excited Benji following behind him. He had obviously bonded with the man and had no idea it would be the last time he would see him.
The man only gave a vague reason for returning Benji that was obviously an excuse — something about that was just not working out, as it was just constant, too much time. It didn’t make any sense based on what the shelter knew about the family. This had to only be an incident, right? But this would turn out to not be an incident whatsoever.
For some reason, it just kept happening. Every time Benji was adopted, he was eventually brought back to the shelter, and within two weeks, he was adopted again. Within 2 weeks, the shelter had never seen anything like this before, and they just could not figure out why it was happening. Everybody at the shelter just felt like they needed to find a solution to this problem.
She was studying to become a veterinarian, and to train, she was volunteering at the shelter for 2 months when Benji was returned by his most recent owner. It was the first time she laid eyes on the dog, and she instantly fell head over heels in love with him. Even though she had only seen a very sad version of Benji, the personnel who had been at the shelter longer told her all about how fun Benji had been before. They also told her the truth about Benji being returned 11 times for various reasons, but this didn’t deter Stacy at all. The paperwork was made in order, and Stacy could take Benji home with her that very same day.
For Benji, it was now the 12th time he was going through the same routine. Stacy was sure she could do it, but this confidence would quickly fade out. When Stacy came home with Benji, her parents were ready to welcome their new addition to the family. Luckily, the family already had a lot of other dog equipment at home, as Benji was not their first dog. They had three more already walking around the house, but his size did make Benji the runt of the pack.
The family immediately noticed that Benji seemed to have trouble believing or interacting with the other dogs. He just kind of stayed in place and looked around a bit. It was as if Benji did not like being there, even though the family took really good care of him. Benji’s attitude then changed a little bit. All the attention and interaction seemed to cool Benji’s cool demeanor a bit, and he started to engage with the other dogs.
Now the next couple of days things went fairly normal. Benji seemed to fit seamlessly into the family’s daily routine. Stacy related all the info back to the shelter, and they were really happy with the progress. But then things started to change out of the blue. Benji was nowhere to be found. Stacy started to panic. The shelter had trusted her with Benji, and she let them down. What was going on?
Stacy started by asking all of her neighbors if they had seen the puppy, but she had no luck. After a morning of asking and searching, Benji was still nowhere to be found. Stacy just hoped that nobody from the shelter would see them. She did not want to let them down. After everything, she finally decided she was ready to call. Then something else happened.
But then the phone finally rang. Somebody had found Benji. The caller didn’t seem to want to tell exactly where and how yet, but he sure did sound upset. A very confused and anxious Stacy drove up to the man’s house. The man that found him was waiting for Stacy at the front door when he arrived. Without saying much, the man took Stacy inside, where he had a very sad-looking Benji locked in a cage.
Stacy wanted to get angry at the man for locking up this poor puppy, but then he started explaining what happened. Everything soon would become clear. Apparently, Benji had shown up earlier that day. The man had not seen any of the posters, so he looked around for an owner. But when he couldn’t find anybody, he was going to call the shelter, as Benji was still wearing a collar with their number. He had Benji just walking around the house at the time, and he thought that he was dealing with a well-behaved puppy. But then his own cat came along to check out what was happening.
Stacy already had a feeling what Benji could have done. Benji suddenly switched at that moment, attacking the man’s cat. He reacted just in time to grab the dog before Benji was able to hurt the cat, who ran off immediately. The man instantly put Benji in his cat cage after that. He then called the shelter and explained exactly what had happened. After describing the dog, the shelter told him that he needed to call Stacy, as she would come to pick him up. And that is what happened.
When Stacy looked at her phone, she saw that she had multiple missed calls from the shelter. It was not possible to keep this secret anymore. She took a very sad Benji from the man and deeply apologized to him. She felt like she had to explain herself to the shelter. She then went back to the shelter with Benji. When she arrived, Stacy found out that the other employees had already called a lot of the previous owners of Benji to ask if they had any similar experiences with Benji. The results of these calls were eye-opening.
Every single one of the previous owners they contacted told them the same story. The actual reason they returned Benji was that he attacked another animal at some point. Now under normal circumstances, Benji would be labeled a dangerous animal and indeed would have been put down. But Stacy and the shelter were not going to let that happen. Now they finally knew what they were dealing with. They also knew that they could help Benji.
Benji was going to stay at the shelter for a couple of weeks where they started to work on getting him to trust cats more. It was a difficult process, but eventually, all the aggression Benji had towards cats was coached out of him, and he was given back into the care of Stacy and her family. From that moment on, they had no problems with their new dog at all anymore. He became an addition to the family. Stacy always knew he could be. Benji had finally found his forever home. No more shelters for Benji. At that point, he had everything a dog ever needed.
