She was adopted and returned to the shelter five times, by five different families. In the end, she was called unadoptable.
But the people at the shelter thought all that energy could be put to work. They reached out to the Rhode Island State Police, who decided to give Ruby a chance as a search and rescue dog.
Her handler was Daniel O’Neil. Training most dogs takes months. Ruby needed about a year and a half, but he never gave up on her. In 2011, she became a certified K-9 trooper.
In October 2017, police in Glocester, Rhode Island, asked for help finding a missing boy.
Ruby and O’Neil searched for hours. Then Ruby suddenly ran down a hill, and there was the boy. He was badly hurt, but he was alive.
When O’Neil went to tell the boy’s mother, Pat Inman, she mentioned that she once worked at an animal shelter. There was a dog she loved there, who later became a state trooper.
The dog was Ruby.
Ruby won the American Humane Hero Dog Award in 2018, and Netflix told her story in the movie “Rescued by Ruby.” She died of cancer in May 2022, but her story lives on.
Have you ever adopted a dog that nobody else wanted? Tell us in the comments.
