Chevy's Rottweiler adoption story

by Jennifer Nowland
(Pacific Northwest)

My husband and I were suckered into rescuing Chevy by some friends in 2003. We had lost our baby girl Savannah when she was only 7 years old. We were heartbroken and not really ready for another dog. . .but fate had other plans.

Chevy’s story is kind of a long one, and so this is my shortened version of it – So here’s how we came to adopt him.

A friends wife worked for a local vet clinic, and one day a former employee brought in a sad looking dog that had apparently been chained up outside and abandoned near her home, hoping that her former employee status might mean the vet clinic would consider treating him for her at a discount rate.

I got a call at work from our friend explaining how this dog, which he thought was a Doberman needed a home, and did we want him. I politely declined as a Doberman was not the kind of dog I wanted and we really weren’t ready for another dog emotionally. I did however offer to help find the dog a home.

The next day, my husband called me at work and asked me to come by our friends house at lunch because there was a fella that wanted to meet me. I knew exactly what was going on when I asked my husband for the name of the fella that wanted to meet me, and his reply was "well, he really doesn’t have a name."

Hmmm, well I went to meet this fella with no name, and he turned out to be a really pathetic looking Rottweiler, not a Doberman. Of course my heart melted the second he licked my face with the biggest tongue I’d ever seen, and I told my husband to bring him home.

The poor boy was extremely under weight, had clearly been abused and he had demodectic mange, which had caused almost all the hair on his face to fall out. He had also never been trained, and was basically a complete basket case.

His only saving grace was that he was an absolute sweetheart and didn’t seem to have a mean bone in his body. His sweetness was a very good thing, because he didn’t have any manners at all, and didn’t even know what the word "sit" meant.

We didn’t know very much at all about his background except that he belonged to a woman who had a boyfriend, and according to neighbors, the boyfriend was not nice to either of them. Apparently the woman left the boyfriend and left her dog there too :0(

Someone (assuming the boyfriend) chained the poor dog up outside without any access to food or water. He clearly had something wrong with one of his toes, which is what the former vet employee noticed and why she took him to the vet clinic.

Turned out that one of the tendons was broken in his foot and so his one toe does not bend or move at all the way his other toes do. It causes a callous to build up on the bottom of his foot as that area is never supposed to touch the ground.

We also discerned that the boyfriend must have ridden a Harley Davidson motorcycle. A few months after we brought Chevy home and had started to bond with him, my husband took the Harley for a ride.

When he came home that night, Chevy was scared to death of him. Even after he took off all his motorcycle gear, got down on his knee’s and called Chevy to him. I have never seen a dog that scared in my life, which both scared me and made me so angry.

We confirmed that the Harley was the issue by having my husband leave in his truck briefly, and then leave on the Harley briefly. Chevy’s reaction to the two different modes of transportation were night and day.

We started asking friends to bring their Harley’s over so that Chevy could start to understand that not everyone who rides one is a bad person. I would literally have to go up to the bike and pet it in order to show him that it wasn’t going to hurt him and neither was the person that rode it.

It took a few months, but he has no problem with Harley’s or those that ride them anymore.

Although it took us a good year of consistent training, love and lot's of patience, Chevy is now 8 1/2 years old and turned into a really great dog. He actually still has some issues, but nothing that we can’t deal with.

His story has a super happy ending, but so many don’t. I hope that his story inspires you to consider Rottweiler adoption. Even just helping at a rescue or fostering a dog will make a world of difference for more Rottweilers than you know.

Thanks for reading Chevy's Rottweiler adoption story