He’d been with his family for 9 years, and couldn’t eat because he missed them so much.
The dog had gotten “too big.” That’s what the dog’s owner said when he surrendered him to a Georgia shelter last year. The dog, a boxer named Mac, had lived with his former owner for nine years — but that part of his life had now come to an end.
At the time, Mac was a little overweight, although not in the extreme. Yet Christina Wilson, a board member for Out of the Box Boxer Rescue, suspects that the owner simply didn’t want to take care of an aging senior dog.
“You hear stories like this all the time,” Wilson told The Dodo. “A lot of people surrender senior dogs just because they don’t want to take care of them when they get older. It’s a sad situation, but it happens more often than people realize.”
Mac may have been “big” when he was surrendered, but he rapidly lost weight in the shelter, probably due to stress.
“The two or three weeks when he was there, he had lost about 20 pounds,” Wilson said. “A lot of dogs, especially seniors, don’t do well in shelters … it can be really noisy and stressful, so I think he just didn’t eat much while he was there.”
Wilson and her husband had just lost their own boxer, Levi, so when Wilson’s husband spotted Mac’s photo on the website for DeKalb County Animal Services, he was immediately drawn to him.
“He was like, ‘Oh my gosh, he reminds me of Levi. We have to get him,’” Wilson said.
Wilson and her husband decided to foster Mac until they could find him a forever home, and they felt hopeful about his prospects. He turned out to be an affectionate dog who loved nothing more than lounging on the couch and getting pets.
Wilson also gets a kick out of Mac’s facial expressions — no matter what his mood is, he always looks grumpy. “He has the same expression all the time, whether he’s happy or overly excited or anything,” Wilson said. “He just has this mopey face, and it’s really cute.”
Wilson was still concerned about Mac’s weight, though. While he had a healthy appetite, he hadn’t yet gained back the weight that he’d lost in the shelter. But after running blood tests, urine tests and getting Mac an ultrasound, he was given a clean bill of health.
There was another problem, though. It turned out that Mac didn’t like other dogs. When Wilson drove Mac to Virginia to meet a potential adopter, Mac didn’t get along with the family’s other dog, despite the other dog being excited to meet Mac. Sadly, the adoption didn’t work out.
Mac even started not getting along with the Wilsons’ other two dogs.
“That’s when we realized, ‘OK, maybe he just needs to be the only dog. That’s the best thing for him,’” Wilson said.
They found Mac another foster home in Georgia with a man who had no other dogs — and Mac thrived there.
“I’ve fattened him up a bit,” Kenneth Wood, Mac’s foster dad, told The Dodo. “He looks perfect now.”
What’s more, Mac may have found a forever home — someone in Florida recently applied to adopt him, although the adoption still needs to be finalized. Everyone is hoping that it will work out for Mac, who is now 10 years old.
“I would absolutely love it if Mac found a home,” Wilson said. “He’s a real sweetheart.”
