“He was barking at everything and growling, but he was wide-eyed."

Tiffany Maki was leaving the park after a quick trip with her dogs when she noticed a fluffy little guy sitting in the grass all alone. He was tied to a collapsed crate and barking at people as they passed by. He hadn’t been there when Maki arrived, meaning he’d been abandoned sometime in the 30 minutes she and her dogs had been playing at the park.

“He was barking at everything and growling, but he was wide-eyed,” Maki told The Dodo. “Just terrified.”

Maki has lots of experience in animal rescue, and she could tell that the dog, later named Explorer, was more scared than anything and didn’t really want to hurt anyone — he just didn’t understand what was happening to him.

“As I would walk closer, he would bark and lunge at me to make me keep my distance,” Maki said. “I knew no one else probably would have tried to grab him for fear of being bitten.”

Maki decided she couldn’t just leave him, so she waited there with him for a while, gaining his trust, before safely securing him and taking him home.

“After getting home, [he] was the SWEETEST dog and SO well trained,” Maki said. “He was crate and potty trained, [and] he knew how to sit, shake, lay down, roll over, beg and heel. Someone loved him at some point.”

Maki contacted some of her rescue friends and was able to place Explorer with Schnauzer Rescue of Texas. She kept him overnight and then dropped him off at their vet the next morning. She couldn’t believe the terrified dog from the park had transformed into such a lover so quickly — and it didn’t take long for someone to snatch him up and adopt him.

Explorer is now living his best life, all because Maki saw through his tough exterior to the sweet little dog he truly was.

Photo Source: TIFFANY MAKI