Twinkle was found in June wandering the streets of Miami all alone and was taken in by True and Faithful Pet Rescue Mission. She was extremely thin and her teeth were rotting, and she quickly began receiving all of the love and attention she needed and deserved.
“She spent a couple of weeks recovering at the vet’s office from surgery and began to put on weight,” Lisa Letson, president and founder of True and Faithful Pet Rescue Mission, told The Dodo. “She gained weight, and what a doll she became! She was adopted [at] the beginning of September to a nice family, and they seemed amazing.”
Right around Christmas, the rescue received an email from Twinkle’s new family saying that, after four months of having her, they wanted to return her.
Apparently, Twinkle would scream all through the night because she wanted to sleep in bed with her new parents. The family had other senior Chihuahuas as well and wouldn’t let any of them sleep in bed with them, so they decided Twinkle wasn’t a good fit and brought her back to the rescue.
“Twinkle was beyond devastated and confused,” Madison Mulvihill, social media coordinator at True and Faithful Pet Rescue, told The Dodo. “I remember walking [into] the main dog room to see she was sitting in the corner on a dog bed, closed off and shaking with fear. She looked at you with such confusion on her face and pain in her heart. The owners handed her over the fence during the time of her return. She continued to look back at that fence, and it’s so hard because we can’t explain why someone would do this to her.”
All Twinkle wanted was to cuddle with her family all night long, and it broke her heart that they couldn’t give her that. Everyone at the rescue was absolutely crushed for her. They’d all loved her from the very beginning and didn’t understand how anyone could return such a sweet little soul.
“Twinkle is not only just adorable, but she has the biggest personality despite being only 3 and a half pounds,” Mulvihill said. “She loves attention and is not afraid to approach you when she wants to be loved. She is so joyful and has the cutest little hopes when she treads through the grass at the ranch. She is a total snuggle bug, leash trained, and gets along with other dogs. She will paw at your hand when she wants to be scratched.”
After she arrived back at the rescue, Twinkle’s friends posted about her on TikTok in the hope that someone would resonate with her story — and the entire internet quickly fell in love with her. The rescue’s email was quickly flooded with adoption requests, and now Twinkle is ready to head off to her new forever home.
“Her new family has six other dogs and a massive king bed with plenty of room for her to sleep in with her new family at night,” Mulvihill said. “This senior will be living out the rest of [her] life knowing what true love [is].”
Twinkle just wants to love and be loved as much as possible, and she’s finally found a family who will accept her for exactly who she is.