Dog abandoned in freezing cold in St. Paul gets new home

(FOX 9)

It may have been a heartbreaking beginning for a dog left abandoned in an alley, but she’s on her way to a happy ending.

On Tuesday, we met Rosabella, who's now in the care of Ruff Start Rescue, and will soon need a permanent home.

The little girl is happy and hopeful, ready for whatever is next. But a week ago Monday, Rosabella was found in a St. Paul alley curled up in the corner of a cage, cold, starving and abandoned. The wind chill was 13 below zero that morning.

"I don’t think she would have last 24 hours, 48 hours max probably," said Breanna Jensen with Ruff Start Rescue. "For as thin as she was, and the conditions, the conditions she was in outside, she would have frozen to death."

Taking just one look at her face surrounded by skin and bones, Jensen says she had to answer the call for help even though she had planned to give her own five dogs a break.

"We had decided to take a break for Christmas," said Breanna Jensen, a foster for Ruff Start Rescue. "Let our dogs kind of decompress and hit it hard in the new year, but eh, animal cruelty hits close to my heart and neglect especially."

Pets and Animals