'Loneliest dog' finds home after 3 years in kennels

Sadie has brown ears and a brown face with a white muzzle and white body. She is standing on a piece of wood and looking staight at the camera with her ears pricked up.

A dog rescued from a property where she was being kept with 200 others has found a new home after nearly three years in kennels.

Collie cross Sadie was rescued by the RSPCA after being found living in unsuitable conditions in outdoor compounds in Cornwall, the charity said.

The five-year-old dog could not be rehomed immediately due to legal processes. But once cleared for adoption she was still in RSPCA kennels after 1,000 days with staff describing her as "Britain's loneliest dog".

In a bid to find her forever home, they posted a video a day of Sadie on social media. On day 83, Mabel Edge from Westward Ho! in Devon stumbled across one of the clips before decided she would adopt her.

Edge said: "When I first saw the clips of her, I was taken by how sweet she seemed and couldn't believe she'd been waiting for a home for so long.

"I found myself checking back in every day to see what she'd been up to, and said to my partner Al how sad it was that nobody wanted her.

"And then he said, 'well why don't we go and look at her?'"

The couple visited Sadie four times at the RSCPA centre before taking her home.

Mabel has long blonde hair and is wearing a brown sleeveless top overa white long sleeved top and blue jeans. She is sitting on a sand dune and is cuddling Sadie and holding her pink lead.

Edge said: "We knew from speaking to the staff at the branch that Sadie would need patience and understanding, because of her difficult past, but we thought she'd be a lot worse.

"After a couple of visits with us, we could see her slowly letting her guard down and she was just so sweet."

She added: "We knew it wouldn't be easy and we would need to work with Sadie, but we knew we could give her something better than she had in kennels."

Edge said on the long journey home Sadie decided to sit in the footwell of their campervan, rather than in a bed they made for her, "and from that moment it was like she'd been in our lives forever".

Dogs of different varieties can be seen in cages either side of an area with at least 18 dogs tighly packed together. One dog's heading is peering out from a blue barrel.

The dog's previous owner received a jail sentence and has been banned from owning dogs for life, the RSPCA said.

Sadie's happy ending comes as the RSPCA warned rising levels of multi-animal cases were putting "unprecedented pressure" on its teams with 3,280 cases reported across England and Wales already this year.

The RSPCA said that in 2025 it responded to more than 4,200 incidents involving 10 or more animals at a single address, involving 88,000 animals, with 75 cases of more than 100 animals.

Sadie has a brown body wityh a white neck and brown face. She is curled up asleep on a dark sofa with her head resting on a purple cushion.

Follow BBC Cornwall on X, Facebook and Instagram. Follow BBC Devon on X, Facebook and Instagram. Send your story ideas to spotlight@bbc.co.uk.

Related internet links

Original source 'Loneliest dog' finds home after 3 years in kennels

Back to home