One of the 84 dogs found living in squalid conditions in a social worker’s house has found a happy home in Hull. Proud owners Morgan Bulman and Luke Shepherd say Cloud is doing amazingly well 18 months after they adopted her.
When she was found, Cloud’s fur was matted and stained yellow with urine, while some of the dogs had never been walked. The 84 dogs, mainly Spaniels, and two cats were found by RSPCA, police and local authority officers in the home that 61-year-old David Parkes shared with his wife Delphine Parkes, 50, and son Sam Parkes, 28, in Galley Hill, Tickhill, South Yorkshire. The walls were covered floor to ceiling with dirt and there was an overpowering smell that made it difficult to breathe or speak, Barnsley Magistrates’ Court heard.
Morgan and Luke adopted Cloud from the RSPCA branch at Clough Road in Hull after five of the dogs were brought to the centre for rehabilitation. The couple had just bought their first home when they decided to look for a rescue dog to add to their family.
Morgan, 22, said: “She still had matt in her fur, she was yellow, she wanted to play but she was a bit hesitant. She fell in love with her ball straight away. Cloud was the craziest of the ones they had at Hull. I said ‘let’s go for it’, we put an application form in and they said they think we’d be a good fit.”
A video shared online after the Parkes’ sentencing hearing showed a dog alone, cowering from the camera at the bottom of the stairs. Morgan said she is “sure” that that dog is Cloud, who is now unrecognizable compared with when they first picked her up. She said: “It pans down to the bottom step to a dog on its own, and when I first saw it I wondered if it was Cloud. We are sure it’s her and we were just so sad. I was laying in bed when I saw it and I just brought her in for a big cuddle, thinking how could she go from that to how she is now.”
Cloud is now two years old and loves nothing more than playing with her ball and interacting with other humans. Morgan said: “At first I was nervous, really worried. But she took to our home straight away. She was in our bed the first night. We had no real worries when we first brought her home.
“She’s amazing, there’s no yellow now. You’d think it would never have happened to her. She loves people so much, loves them more than other dogs, which is weird when she was living with 80 plus of them. She loves to smile and pose for the camera. I’m always finding spots to take pictures of her. She’s always posing away.”
But it wasn’t such a happy ending for one of the dogs, which sadly had to be euthanised after it had been rescued due to its health issues. All three defendants are due to be sentenced on December 9 at Doncaster Magistrates’ Court.
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