Border Collie Too Burnt & Sick to Be Touched, Now Loving His Cuddles with New Owner

When Curtis Hartsell set out to find a canine companion to live his life with, he never expected to stumble upon ZIB so quickly and fall in love instantly!

ZIB (formerly known as Kong/#387) lived the better of his short 1 year life in absolute pain and isolation because of a skin disease and a severe sunburn that prevented others from touching him. When he got rescued by the Border Collie Rescue & Rehab operation, his life began taking a turn for the better. Slowly his skin condition got better with treatments and his foster home was a much healthier place for him than a shelter.

 
Over the past few weeks, his life has changed even more! After a thorough application process and a home visit, ZIB was reunited with his new life long friend Curtis Hartsell. Unsure if he could find a dog that could follow his active lifestyle, Hartsell was finding it difficult to pull the trigger on bringing one home. That all changed when he stumbled upon ZIB’s profile, saying the following about the chance encounter:

“I looked through his profile and just immediately fell in love with his single picture and the description they put on the page,” Hartsell told The Dodo. “His foster mom described his temperament and personality and I described my life to her a bit and she said we sounded perfect for each other.”

Formerly called Kong or #387 once he got to the Border Collie Rescue & Rehab, Curtis believed that with this new start in life his canine companion deserved a new name. ZIB came to mind, honouring a famous Soviet space dog.

“The original was just a lost dog running around base that they sent to space for successful flight,” Hatsell explained. “I felt this was fitting for my ZIB because he was just a lost dog until someone picked him up and helped nurture him back to health. Now he and I are off to the stars together!”

 
Hartsell posted the above picture on his Facebook profile, really committed to the idea of honouring this amazing space adventurer!

As soon as the application process was done, with Curtis being updated daily, they finally got to meet officially as the best of friends. ZIB’s foster mother got out of the car, gave the leash over to Hartsell and the deal was done!

“I was handed his leash … I got down in front of him and gave him his new name and asked if he wanted to come home with me,” Hartsell recounted. “‘ZIB, I’m going to call you ZIB. Do you like that? How would you like to come home with me, ZIB?’ He was sitting in front of me, looked into my eyes and then hugged me and bowed his head. It was adorable; I’ll never forget that moment.”

One of Hartsell’s friend even managed to get a picture of the touching moment!

 
This dog that once couldn’t be touched because of the excruciating pain was now catching up on all his the cuddles he missed out. We know that Curtis will take good care of ZIB and that they’ll keep each other busy with all the belly rubs!