Eddie Olivarez was taking a break from his job at Albertsons, a grocery store in Arcadia, California, when he spotted a shoebox sitting on the ground by the dumpsters. He could have just tossed the shoebox away, but something told him to lift the lid and see what was inside.
When he did, he got the biggest surprise. The tiniest puppy was inside.
It was a wonder the puppy was still alive — it was an extremely hot day, with temperatures ranging between 97 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and the puppy had no food or water inside the box.
He also had a head and eye injury, so Olivarez got in touch with Piper Wood, founder of Hand in Paw, a California rescue group, and asked for her help.
“He [the puppy] had blood on top of his head, and his little eye was popping out,” Wood told The Dodo. “And the dog was so weak. I don’t know when the last time he ate was or had water … he was very anemic and almost going into seizures.”
The puppy, who Wood believes is a Shih Tzu mix, was also very young — too young to be on his own.
“He doesn’t even have teeth yet,” Wood said. “He’s like 4 or 5 weeks, so he definitely needs to be with his mother.”
While no one is sure who dumped the puppy at the supermarket, Wood thinks there’s a good chance a backyard breeder abandoned him after the puppy got injured.
“I see this kind of thing a lot,” Wood said. “When people breed their dogs illegally … they’re not kept in good conditions, and they just want to make money off of them. And oftentimes, they’ll sell them very underage.”
“I think that whoever had him didn’t know what to do when he got hurt, so they just tossed him in the parking lot in the shoebox,” Wood added. “There are just so many other ways you could go about that. Take him to an emergency vet or surrender him to a shelter. Either one is better than just leaving him in a hot shoebox with no food or water, and very badly injured.”
Wood wasn’t able to get the puppy that night, so she asked Olivarez to care for him overnight, and to meet her at the vet clinic first thing in the morning.
