You can’t miss him.
His little face pressed against the window, staring up at you with those sad, brown eyes.
One look from 9-month-old Benny and it’s all over. You’ll be wrapped around his baby finger, or paw is more like it.
The wrinkly boxer mix and his two equally heartbreaking brothers are the latest charity cases for Rescue Pup, a Mill Creek-based foster care network for abandoned dogs in King and Snohomish counties.
Benny and his brothers were discovered three months ago in a wooded area near Machias. Their tails had been docked and their duclaws removed, indicating that someone — an underground breeder most likely — had cared for them briefly. But a deformity affecting the dogs’ front legs likely made it impossible to sell the animals.
“So they dumped them in the woods,” Benny’s foster mom and Rescue Pup volunteer Joyce Gonzalez said. “I’d go after them myself … It just makes you so mad when people do these things. Throw away three perfectly wonderful dogs like they were garbage.”
They’re each a bit bow-legged — Benny more than the other two, Zeus and Thore — but aside from that, they have a clean bill of health.
Veterinarians believe the deformity is a birth defect that resulted from malnutrition of the dogs’ mother during pregnancy.
Surgery can reverse the defect, but it will cost approximately $3,000 per leg — $12,000 in total. To pay for the operations, Rescue Pup is having an auction at 4 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 9, at the Mays Pond Club House in Bothell.
Volunteers hope to raise all $12,000 within the next couple of months, while the dogs’ bones are flexible enough to benefit from the procedure.
Veterinarians will remove a section of bone between the ankle and knee joints of each leg and pin and plate the bones so they will grow straight.
“They’re at the perfect age right now,” Gonzalez said. “They’d develop severe joint problems and perhaps lose the ability to walk without the surgery.”
The family that discovered Benny and his brothers called around to several local animal shelters before they found Rescue Pup.
“No one would take them,” Gonzalez said. “They all said they’d just put the dogs to sleep.”
Gonzalez took Benny and another volunteer took Thor and Zeus.
“They’re all as sweet as can be,” Gonzalez said, patting Benny’s head. “They’re well behaved. I mean I can’t see any of them ever hurting anyone.”
Benny, who goes to work everyday with Gonzalez at Rescue Pup headquarters — Pet Pleasers pet store — greets everyone who walks through the door and rolls on his back for a pat on the tummy.
He’ll fall asleep right there on the floor, snuggling up to any obliging stranger’s feet.
“He’s a love bug that’s for sure,” Gonzalez said, laughing. “Sometimes he gets a little too affectionate … we’ll have to get him fixed before too long.”
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