Stanley is a Staffordshire bull terrier with a white coat and a black patch over one eye. Today he spends his evenings indoors with a family who love him. But the first time the RSPCA met him, he was alone, outside, and in a terrible state.
This is the story of how Stanley went from the street to a family Christmas.
Found tied to a drain pipe
Stanley was found emaciated and tied to a drain pipe. He was covered in scabs. He had been left there, outside on hard ground, with no food, no shelter and nobody coming back for him.
The first photo of Stanley shows a dog on a lead on tarmac, painfully thin. His ribs and hip bones were visible under his skin. It is a hard photo to look at, and it shows how close to the edge he had come.
Somebody had decided they no longer wanted him. Instead of finding him help, they tied him up and walked away.
Into RSPCA care
The RSPCA took Stanley in. He needed food, treatment for his skin and, most of all, time. A dog who has been starved cannot be fixed in a day. His body needed to recover slowly and safely.
Bit by bit, with regular meals and care, Stanley began to change. The scabs healed. The thin frame started to fill out. The dog underneath, a friendly staffy with a distinctive eye patch, began to show through.
200 days of waiting
Getting Stanley healthy was only half the battle. The other half was finding him a family.
It took 200 days.
That is more than six months of waiting, of watching visitors come and go, of hoping. Staffies are often among the dogs that wait longest in rescue. Many people walk past them because of their reputation, without ever getting to know the dog in front of them.
Stanley was one of those dogs. He had already survived being abandoned. Now he had to survive being overlooked.
Why the wait is so hard
For a dog in rescue, every day is much like the last. There are kind staff, walks and meals, but there is no family, no sofa and no person who is only theirs.
Rescue teams do everything they can to keep long-stay dogs happy. But they all say the same thing: the best place for a dog is a home. Every day a dog waits is a day it is not living the life it should.
For Stanley, after everything he had been through at the start, those 200 days must have felt endless.
A new family at last
Then, finally, someone said yes.
Stanley was adopted by a new family. This was not a reunion with anyone from his past. This was a brand new start, with people who chose him after seeing the dog he really was.
The after photo says it all. Stanley is indoors with his new family, next to a Christmas tree. As the Mirror put it, Stanley now has a lovely new family.
The thin dog tied to a drain pipe is gone. In his place is a healthy staffy with the same black eye patch, warm and safe, at Christmas.
The difference a family makes
Put the two photos side by side and it is hard to believe it is the same dog. But it is: the same white coat, the same black patch over his eye.
What changed was not Stanley. What changed was that people finally took care of him. First the RSPCA, who rescued and nursed him, and then his new family, who gave him a home.
Why Stanley’s story matters
Stanley’s story is a reminder of two things.
First, neglect is real, and it happens close to home. Dogs like Stanley are still being found tied up and left behind.
Second, the dogs who wait longest are not the dogs with the least to give. Stanley waited 200 days. He was worth every one of them to the family who finally took him home.
If you are thinking about adopting, look at the dogs who have been waiting the longest. Ask about the staffies. Ask about the quiet ones in the corner. One of them could be your Stanley.
Source and photos: Mirror (Ampp3d), January 2015.
Images in this article are illustrative recreations made for this story, not photographs of the dog.
