OMAHA, Neb. – When a dog named Ellie Mae was brought to the Nebraska Humane Society in Omaha, she was a pile of matted fur. She couldn’t walk and had to be brought in for help in a plastic storage bin.
She was found in the home of her owner, who had died, by those sent to clean up the house, WOWT reported.
In a post on Facebook, the Humane Society called it the “worst that we’ve ever seen.”
The Animal Medical team at the Humane Society got right to work.
“Basically it just looked like it was just a container of mops. Dirty mops,” Dr. Amber Horn, veterinarian, told WOWT. “And then we saw it move a little bit.”
“They frantically waved me in here,” Jenna Baseler, groomer, said. “They’re like, ‘We need you.'”
Baseler said the task of “just getting through the matting” to find the dog beneath all of the fur was daunting.
“I thought the emotional part would be a challenge, which I mean the emotions just kind of came afterward. You just really shut those emotions off and you’re just like, ‘I really need to help this dog’,” Baseler said.
Along with the tangled hair, groomers found feces and other debris in Ellie Mae’s fur.
In the end, they removed about nine pounds of fur from the 11-pound dog. The dog’s nails had grown to about six inches in length.
Ellie Mae also needed hernia surgery, dental work, and antibiotics to ward off infection, the Humane Society said in a post on its website.
“Now that she’s doing better than ever – she seems like a whole new dog,” the Humane Society said on Facebook.
Ellie Mae is not yet listed as ready for adoption.
