Noel won’t be spending another Christmas in the shelter system.
After 1263 days of waiting for a home, the crop-eared pit bull rescue dog found her forever family thanks to Lucky Dog Animal Rescue and a dedicated fan club of volunteers rooting for her happy ending.
Three and a half years ago, Noel arrived at Lucky Dog as a pregnant pooch pulled from Florence County Environmental Services’ animal control shelter.
“She was very shy and scared in her kennel and very pregnant,” Stephanie Moore tells PEOPLE of meeting Noel in Dec. 2020.
At the time, Moore volunteered for Washington D.C.-based Lucky Dog, helping the shelter pull and transport at-risk canines from kill shelters in South Carolina to foster parents in the D.C. area. Today, Moore is Lucky Paws’ Team Lead for the S.C. Rescue Campus.
“Pregnant and nursing moms are always a priority to get out of the shelter ASAP, as it is nowhere for newborns to be,” Moore adds on why Noel was moved to Lucky Dog in 2020.
Lucky Dog found Noel a foster home where she could have her babies in peace. Once the puppies were old enough to start life on their own, Lucky Dog found homes for all of them.
Unfortunately, while her babies were adopted quickly, Noel struggled to find a home because she was shy and scared of new people.
After weaning her puppies, Noel moved to a long-term foster home with a foster parent dedicated to building her confidence and then moved to a new foster home with a similar setup in April 2023.
This Silver Spring, Md., foster home belonged to Irene Marquez, an animal lover who has spent the past 18 years helping rescue dogs find homes, including dozens of foster puppies.
When Marquez met Noel, the dog was still struggling with her confidence, but Marquez was willing to be patient.
“She got transported to me, and we had to carry her into the house, and she ran into her crate and then got to the furthest corner of the crate and sat there for 18 hours. It was heartbreaking,” Marquez says of Noel’s first day in her home.
But slowly, thanks to Marquez’s welcoming calmness, Noel became bolder.
“It took her three days to venture out of the crate and come out into my family room area. And she kind of peeked her head in but didn’t approach, and then she walked right back into her crate. But then she started doing that every day. And then, it took another two weeks for her to fully explore the basement. And in three weeks, she actually got up on top of a couch,” Marquez recounts.
She adds that by three months, Noel “was just really comfortable in my house” and loved going on long walks with her doting foster parent. But what Noel adored even more than these strolls was helping Marquez care for foster puppies.
“It didn’t matter what size, as long as they were puppies. She let them do whatever they wanted to her,” Marquez says, adding that Noel was an “amazing mom” to over two dozen foster puppies while staying at her house.
“Every puppy that came into the house, she loved,” the foster parent adds.
According to Marquez, the puppies also helped Noel. The little pups encouraged Noel to come out of her shell and relearn natural dog behaviors.
Even though Noel’s confidence improved in her foster homes, the dog struggled to find an adopter until July 2024, when a Nextdoor post shared by Noel’s adoption coordinator reached the right eyes.
Adoption coordinators are volunteer roles at Lucky Dog. Adoption coordinators help their rescue pet clients reach more prospective adopters by sharing the animals’ information online and at events.
“We are the advocate for the dog. So we talk to people interested in adopting them and ensure it’s a good match for them. If it is, we can help through the adoption process.” Lowell Nelson. Noel’s adoption coordinator, says of his role.
As a long-stay rescue dog under Lucky Dog’s care for over three months, Noel also had Lucky Dog’s long-stay task force helping her.
The task force was the group that came up with the idea of sharing Noel’s adoption story through a digital flyer on Nextdoor, which caught the attention of the dog’s eventual adopters, Joe Capra and Valerie Smith.
When the couple spotted Noel on Nextdoor, they were quickly convinced the dog was the rescue pet they were looking for to join their husky-mix Truffles.
“We saw her, and then we talked to Lucky Dog about it and found out she’d been in foster care for three years, and we were like, ‘Yeah, no more of that,'” Capra says of what happened next.
Shortly after spotting Noel on Nextdoor, Capra and Smith stocked up on supplies for the dog and arranged to meet her at Marquez’s house.
“We drove up there with the full intention of taking her home. We had a little name tag made for her with our information,” Smith says.
Noel was shy at first meeting Capra and Smith but slowly opened up, especially to Smith.
“I took one look at her, and I was like, ‘Wow, she’s my dog. I can’t wait to bring her home,'” Smith recalls.
Smith brought Noel home the night of their first meeting on July 19. The dog, still shy of new people, quickly settled in with her forever family.
“Irene had warned us that it was going to take her a while to warm up. And when she had started at Irene’s house, she stayed in her crate for a couple of days,” Smith says.
So Smith and Capra were surprised and touched when Noel stayed in her crate for just a few minutes before she “sat on the couch with us and watched a movie and stayed on the couch.”
It was a testament to how far Noel had come over 1263 days and to the people and puppies who helped her. Noel continues to get more comfortable with life as an adopted dog each day.
“She’s really grown a lot,” says Smith, who agrees with Capra that Noel has become a “mild-mannered, very gentle” dog.
The couple hopes Noel’s story inspires other pet parents to consider adopting a shelter’s long-stay pets.
“I think something important is just to meet any dog where they are. When we first met Noelle, she was extremely shy. She rarely lets us pet her, but it takes time to build trust. And I think if you are willing to put time into building a relationship, it’s really rewarding,” Smith says.
Nelson echoes this sentiment and encourages animal lovers to remember that “rescuing is a way to do something good for an animal.”
Noel’s adoption coordinator and the rest of the Lucky Dog volunteers who helped her are ecstatic that the dog has a forever home now.
“Noel got adopted on a Friday night. I went to a Lucky Dog adoption event on Saturday. The amount of volunteers that came up to me and hugged me and said, ‘Oh my God, our girl got adopted,’ was amazing. Everybody knew Noel,” Marquez says.
