It’s impossible to pass Speck’s kennel at the Bullock County Humane Society without stopping to say, “Hi.”
The second the loving pup sees someone approaching, he pushes his face between the metal bars and reaches out his paw.
“All he wants is people love,” Desiray Miracle-Wilder, the shelter’s director, told The Dodo. “He will reach his little hand out and he just wants you to touch him and hold his hand. And he’s so sad when you walk off to finish cleaning or whatever you have to do.”
Speck has sat unnoticed in a small kennel in the Alabama shelter for a year and a half waiting for a family to choose him. Judging Speck by the scars on his face, you might think the dog would be hardened by years of living on the street, but he couldn’t be more trusting.
“You could put anything else around him — another giant dog, a cat, but he is just so fixated on getting love from people that he doesn’t care about anything else,” Wilder said.
“He just wants you to touch him,” she added. “If you sit down, he’s laying on you, if you hold his hand, he’ll hold your hand, if you scratch his belly, he’ll roll over.”
Last Thursday, Wilder was cleaning the kennels when she was inspired to film the pup’s sweet hand-holding routine.
Hoping to drum up some interest in Speck, she posted the video on her Facebook page, and the clip quickly went viral, gaining 96,000 views in just a few days.