Determined Rescuers Save Dog Living Six Months In Parking Lot

Suzette Hall makes it her mission to help the dogs left behind on the streets of Los Angeles. Recently, she heard about a small dog living in a Home Depot parking lot and went to find him. She found a dirty matted dog, resembling a discarded mop.

Hall, who runs Logan’s Legacy 29 learned that Oreo, as she named him, had been living at the shopping center for at least six months!

Hall and her dedicated team of volunteers were determined to rescue Oreo but doing so would not prove easy. “[F]or over a week, we have been trying to rescue this baby, up at 2 a.m. almost every day and staying late at night,” Hall wrote on Facebook when recounting efforts to catch Oreo.

They were not helped by the shoppers or by the employees at the mall either. Hall said, “It would break our hearts to see him people were showing up and chasing him. Sadly, the employees were actually sabotaging as well. They thought that he was happy there.” She added, “Well, you know I wasn’t giving up. He was not happy there.”

Oreo was being fed in multiple locations around the parking lot so he didn’t approach any of the traps they laid out for him. Hall said they tried to enlist the help of the one employee who Oreo trusted, but the person declined to help.

“We weren’t giving up, [a] storm [was] coming, and I just couldn’t fathom him being out there in another storm,” Hall wrote. “But we knew a trap wasn’t gonna work. Someone had to gain his trust.”

It turned out to be a moment of luck that changed Oreo’s fate. Hall and her team showed up one afternoon to find Oreo was fast asleep. Two volunteers, Yamileth and Karla, quietly snuck up on him and cover him with a blanket. “They scooped him up with a blanket,” Hall said. “[It was] just another miracle.”

Hall breathed a huge sigh of relief and wrote on Facebook, “All the lonely nights behind him, all the days of being chased, all of the fear and almost getting hit by cars was finally behind him. There are not enough words to say how happy we are.”

Oreo appeared happy too, calm and curious as to what his rescuers were about to do.

Hall drove Oreo to the veterinarian where he was looked over and shaved down. “Under all the dreadlocks, the painful matting, a beautiful little boy appears,” Hall wrote. “His horrible past [is] behind him, and a new [hope] begins. I just know he feels amazing.”

Oreo looks like a completely different dog now, and his happiness is written on his face. “Rescuing him gave him hope, and it renewed my hope, too,” Hall said.

Since his rescue, Oreo is recovering from his long ordeal in a foster home while he waits for his forever family. Hall is excited for Oreo’s future. She said, “I can’t wait for him to know what love really is.”

Visit the Logan’s Legacy 29 website to apply for dogs available for adoption and to support their rescue work.