Spinach came to Austin Pets Alive! (APA!) as a puppy with a ruptured eye, and if they hadn’t taken him, he would have been put down. Once his eye was removed, the sweet puppy felt so much better, and his new friends hoped he would be adopted very soon.

Unfortunately, over 432 days later, Spinach was still waiting for a home.

Spinach was just a little puppy with lots of energy and optimism when he first arrived at the shelter, but after over a year of waiting, he was starting to lose hope. So many staff members and volunteers had fallen in love with Spinach by that point, though, and they refused to let him give up.

“When he was in the playgroup, he was happy and joyful because he loved to play with other dogs,” Frankie Helfey, an APA! volunteer, told The Dodo. “Then you would see him in his kennel, and it was heartbreaking because you could tell how sad he was. It had been a few months since he was not eating as much, he was losing weight, and we started getting creative … Every week, we would change [things] up so he would eat. For the last two months, I gave him 2-4 bowls of food just to see what he would eat.”

Everyone knew they needed to get Spinach out of the shelter as soon as possible. They posted him on social media, trying to show the world what an incredible dog he was — and miraculously, it worked.

A family in Oklahoma fell in love with Spinach and made his dreams come true. After a year of waiting, he was finally going home.

“There have been a lot of happy tears and also some anxiousness when he was being driven to his home in Oklahoma,” Helfey said. “We have to be cautious but hopeful. Some of these dogs just need to be given a chance.”