Tick covered puppy found in basketball court by girl and mom saved, cleaned and given loving home, becoming their missing piece: ‘This puppy found us as we’ve been missing my mother who passed away a year ago’

Laurent Shinar • Writer and Editor

Aug 17, 2026 10:45 AM EDT

Running into a puppy covered in ticks is not your everyday occurrence but that was the lucky way in which one young girl and her mother ended up meeting their soul dog. This is their story.

Puppies are found in the most unusual of places and in the most unexpected of times. With them being less mobile and less vocal than older puppers, they are stifled in their ability to actively seek help when they need it. Not to mention that the world is much larger and scarier to them than an older dog. So you can imagine that coming across a tick covered puppy in a basketball court is quite the surprising place to find one. Totally exposed, dragging itself along in hopes of something good happening. And boy oh boy did something good happen.

The young girl who first spotted the doggo called her mother to tell her of the hard done by pup and she came immediately. Knowing that an innocent young doggo like this would not last long in his condition she scooped him up and brought him home to be cleaned and cared for. Though before long the pupper started filling his rescuer's hearts with a feeling that they had not felt in quite a while. It was love, the love they had been missing from their recently passed grandmother. The love that would come to heal the holes in their hearts. So we leave you to indulge in the rest of this tale and find out how serendipitous and wholesome a puppy rescue can be.

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Small brown and black wet puppy sitting on wood deck
^{Puppy portrayed by model}
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Holy moly, now that really is rough. For a puppy this small to end up with that many ticks on them you can only imagine how much of its body must have been covered. It must have looked more like a tick than a dog at that point. But thankfully it would suffer no more from its parasitic stowaways and be safe in the loving care of this mother daughter dog loving duo. There really is no more that a puppy in such a position could ask for. Had he been left there, who knows when the next benevolent hooman would come along.
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Oh goodness that is so heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. How can it be both those things at the same time? It makes no sense, but it seems that is the case and we are totally overwhelmed by this closure that everyone in the story is getting. The puppy is getting a safe and loving home, and this family is getting a bundle of love and joy to fill the hole in their hearts that they have been dragging since their grandmother passed. You really could not ask for a more wholesome ending to a story that starts off with such little hope for happiness.
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Tick covered puppy found in basketball court by girl and mom saved, cleaned and given loving home, becoming their missing piece: ‘This puppy found us as we’ve been missing my mother who passed away a year ago’

Running into a puppy covered in ticks is not your everyday occurrence but that was the lucky way in which one young girl and her mother ended up meeting their soul dog. This is their story.

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