“Willow” of South Korea
September 12,2018 (Wednesday)
Willow is so well-known that he was nominated to participate in the 2018 American Humane Hero Dog Awards — a two-hour television special sponsored by the Lois Pope LIFE Foundation and Zoetis.
A few years ago, a small senior poodle named Willow was dropped off — his fur matted and covered with dirt — at a dog meat farm in South Korea. What’s even worse? His owners had left him there because Willow — who was 11 at the time — was getting “too old.” Thankfully, a rescue group called Save Korean Dogs took Willow in and worked on finding him a new forever home with a longtime animal advocate and senior dog lover from Nevada named Heather Heath — but the journey was far from easy.
When rescuers first met Willow the poodle in August 2016, it was hard to believe that he had been someone’s pet.
With dirty hair filled with mats and all his teeth rotting out, it was clear no one had cared about him for a long time.
After years of neglect, Willow’s owners no longer wanted him because he was getting too old — so they dropped him off at a dog meat farm in South Korea. He was about 11 years old.
ASPIN 