PARIS — Employees at Responsible Pet Care of Oxford Hills posted a photo on Facebook last week of a white, purebred Staffordshire bull terrier named Ginger with a sign hanging from her neck.

The sign read: “I have been in the shelter for 1,456 days. Please adopt me.”

The photo was shared thousands of times and was picked up by the Huffington Post, a national news and opinion website.

Kelly Ouellette, a veterinary technician at Responsible Pet Care who has been responsible for overseeing Ginger’s medical treatment, said Ginger has been at the shelter longer than any animal in the shelter’s history.

“Normally, I’d say it’s normal for a dog to be here as short as a week and as long as two months, depending on the dog and its personality,” Ouellette said. “Ginger is definitely the longest we’ve had a dog.”

Ouellette said Ginger, 7, was brought to the shelter in 2014 as a stray.

“That makes it hard for us to figure out her background and what she was like with other people,” Ouellette said.

Since the photo went viral, Ouellette said, the shelter has been able to figure out some of Ginger’s background after a previous owner posted on Facebook.

A woman named Kelsey Cronin wrote on the shelter’s Facebook page that her brother and father used to own the dog, but after her brother, who serves in the military, was transferred to California and her father moved to Hawaii, the dog was given up to a couple “who wanted to train her as an emotional therapy dog of some sort.”

“I am completely heartbroken,” Cronin wrote on Facebook. “We really thought (she) was going to be in good hands, and the thought of her sleeping alone in a shelter every night kills me.”

As of Thursday, Ouellette said, the shelter had fielded several hundred telephone calls and had received four adoption applications for Ginger.

Ouellette urged those interested in adopting Ginger to read her entire bio before inquiring about her.

“We get calls from people with other dogs or animals, or young children,” Ouellette said, “but we’ve specifically put in her bio that she needs to be the only animal in the home.” 

She said Ginger has a tendency to display behavior known as “resource guarding.”

Experts in canine behavior say resource guarding is marked by aggression, and can be dangerous for anyone who gets close to an object, person, animal or other item a dog considers important or valuable.

Resource guarding is a natural animal instinct that often appears in the presence of food, according to experts.

“Normally, when a dog has issues with resource guarding, we can work with them and overcome it, but Ginger is stubborn,” Ouellette said. “We’ve had private training classes, but if Ginger wants something and it’s hers, that’s the end of that.

“It makes it hard to place a dog like that in a home,” she said. 

Ouellette said those interested in adopting Ginger will have multiple meet-and-greets with her.

“The shelter will also do a home visit to make sure that it’s a proper place for Ginger,” Ouellette said. “After the home visit, we do a sleepover to make sure the dog will do well.”

According to Ginger’s bio page on the shelter’s website, she has been spayed, is house-trained and is up to date on shots.

While Ginger is still in need of a home, Ouellette said the attention the shelter has received over the past week has resulted in other animals with long tenures at the shelter being adopted.

“We have a dog named Mario that has been here for two years,” Ouellette said, “and just after we posted about Ginger, someone came in and adopted Mario.” 

The employees at the shelter are confident Ginger, after four years, will find a home, especially after the attention she has received since her photo was posted.

“She’s stubborn and set in her ways, but we all know and love her here at the shelter,” Ouellette said.

“She’s our princess. We’ve done everything we can to get her into a forever home. I never thought putting a sign around her neck and taking a picture would get us to where we are now.”

mdaigle@sunmediagroup.net

Pat Ingersoll, the canine director at the Responsible Pet Care of Oxford Hills, plays with Ginger, 7, on Thursday in Paris. (Daryn Slover/Sun Journal)

Ginger, 7, has been at the Responsible Pet Care of Oxford Hills for almost 1,500 days. Because of guarding issues, the shelter in Paris is careful about who can adopt Ginger. (Daryn Slover/Sun Journal)