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Zack Keithy, our author, is a certified veterinarian technician (UC Blue Ash) for over 6 years (contact him here). The articles written here are based on his expertise and experience, combined with a review by our expert vet reviewers including Dr M. Tarantino. Learn more about us here.
Animal control officers in Syracuse, New York recently found a female dog left all alone in an abandoned flat. What made the case unusual wasn’t just where she was found, it was her appearance, the dog was bright yellow from head to toe.
The officers sent photos to the team at Friends Forever Animal Rescue, who were left utterly confused. “What is it? How? Why?” the rescue wrote on their Facebook page. Nobody could immediately explain the coloring, with theories ranging from dye to some kind of external substance that had stained her coat.
Her strange appearance wasn’t her only problem. The dog, whom the rescue named Amarillo, was completely dehydrated and her claws had grown far too long, clear signs she’d been neglected for a long stretch of time. Despite everything she’d been through, she was surprisingly affectionate, cheerful, and eager for attention.
Rescuers began washing her coat, and it took seven baths before the yellow coloring even started to fade. By the sixteenth bath, it had almost entirely disappeared, revealing a coat that’s now shiny and healthy underneath. According to the rescue, Amarillo gets along well with children, dogs, and cats, loves walks and adventures, and is currently searching for her forever home.
My thoughts: It’s easy to get distracted by how strange Amarillo looked at first glance, but the real story here is what was underneath that color the whole time, a dehydrated, neglected dog who somehow stayed affectionate and eager for connection despite the conditions she’d been living in. Sixteen baths is a lot of patient, repetitive work for a rescue team, and it says something that nobody treated her unusual appearance as the point, they treated it as one more problem to work through on the way to actually helping her.
Source: Friends Forever Animal Rescue
