Late last month, a little bully mix puppy arrived at Border Tails Rescue in Northbrook, Illinois. From the first moment the dog arrived at the shelter, the staff members instantly fell in love with her.
“She was literally the cutest dog I’ve ever seen,
and she kind of reminded me of a pig, honestly,” Harleigh Garcia, founder of Border Tails Rescue, told The Dodo. “She was really short and round.”
The rescue staff noticed that there was something a little different about the puppy’s lips and nose. A visit to the vet confirmed that the pup had a cleft lip, a condition that isn’t painful and just meant she needed a little extra love.
“It’s really just cosmetic and obviously makes her 10 times cuter,” Garcia said.
Garcia and the rest of the Border Tails Rescue staff loved getting to know the pup, whom they decided to name Onion Ring. They found that she was surprisingly calm and relaxed for a puppy and wanted nothing more than to curl up and hang out all day.
“She was honestly pretty chill,” Garcia said. “We had her in the office with us all day, and she was just laying at our feet, sitting under our desks.”
While many people might think that a cleft lip would negatively impact a puppy’s quality of life, Onion Ring’s unique lip doesn’t bother her. It just requires a little extra care to keep clean and avoid infections.
“It doesn’t affect her as much as you might think,” Garcia said.
That being said, puppies with cleft lips tend to struggle a bit more with upper respiratory infections than other dogs, so the rescue staff got Onion Ring into a foster home as quickly as possible.
Given how adorable Onion Ring is, it’s not surprising that she quickly caught the eye of a mom and teenage daughter who wanted to adopt her. They’d previously had a micro bully with a cleft lip and cleft palate, so when they saw Onion Ring’s adoption profile, they fell in love immediately.
“That made them … a really great fit for her,” Garcia said. “Just having experience with that and knowing it’s not as scary as it looks.”
As happy as Garcia is that Onion Ring got adopted, she’s going to miss seeing her little face around the office. Getting to know her for the brief time she was in the shelter was a treat.
“Honestly, we can’t decide if Onion Ring is a puppy, a potato or the cutest little gremlin we’ve ever seen,” Border Tails Rescue wrote on Instagram.
