‘He came home a stranger, now he’s family’: Previously mistreated rescue dog Bray wins over his new cat siblings and claims a loving furever family of his very own

THE STORY FROM OP: 

I adopted a doge who was a day away from being euthanized. By chance, I came across an ad on Gumtree of all places, for an urgent rehoming needed for a previously mistreated hound doge. Located over 2.5 hours from me… Reading the description, I couldn’t let the outcome he faced take place. Having four cats myself meant that I would even take him in just for a few months. On a bigger block property at my place in regional NSW, I would then be able to bide the time before rehoming him somewhere he could thrive.

I made the drive to the place he was at and was met, for the first time ever, with an uncertainty I had about approaching a dog. Which was an odd one, because that’s never occurred, but he seemed like he could and would quite easily rip my limbs off and beat me with them.

I started to wonder why in the world I thought this was a feasible plan to save him. He was living with a family who had rescued him two years earlier from an abandoned yard, where he’d been chained up for the better part of a couple years. To the point his skin had grown around the chain in some parts and worn a perfect wound around his neck, and he was missing a rear toe.