Disabled Pit Bull Finds Home With Girls That Needed To Know Being Different Is OK

With Christmas right around the corner there are people all around the world trying to put a charitable foot forward and offer good cheer to their neighbors.

One pit bull named Carmella, found a family looking to extend their charitable desires to a disabled dog that might be able to help them.

Before her adoption, the pit bull spent her days with her foster care-taker, Sandy Roberto.

Roberto owns a pet grooming shop in New Jersey and she rescued the pit bull from a kill shelter in Newark. She cared for Carmella for about a year.

The pit bull is believed to have spent the majority of her young life kept in a crate so small that she had no room to grow. As a result, Carmella has front legs that are weaker than they should be and that bow outward. She also has some spinal problems that affect her movement.

Not only being a pit bull, but being disabled, there was little hope of Carmella finding a forever home.

Roberto told ABC News that people would see the pit bull and remark on how beautiful she was. Then she would tell them about the dog’s disability or they would see Carmella get up and walk and they would opt out of adopting her.

For a while, Roberto was afraid Carmella would never find a family that would love her the way she deserved.

However, Christmas is a time for good will and miracles.

While the pit bull was waiting for a family, a little girl suffering from her own disabilities was asked by her mother, Dana Polito-Corry, what she wanted for Christmas.

Tianna, the girl in question, answered that she wanted a disabled dog.

That was before she ever knew that the pit bull existed.

Tianna and her twin sister, Gianna, were born with cataracts. Both girls had their first surgery at the age of three-months-old. At five-years-old, Tianna was diagnosed with glaucoma and, since her first surgery, has undergone seven more. She is legally blind. Gianna is also a high-functioning autistic.

According to their mother, the girls are just starting to realize that they are different than the other kids at school. So when Polito-Corry came across the disabled pit bull on a trip to the groomers, she knew she had to try to fulfill her daughter’s one Christmas wish.

In secret, the girl’s mother brought their four other dogs on a meet-and-greet with the pit bull to make sure they got along. When she was sure there would be no issues, she brought Carmella home and surprised Tianna and Gianna.

The pit bull immediately seemed to feel at home, jumping up on the bed as the girls fawned over her.

“It was like [she] lived there forever,” Polito-Corry said. “She’s already feeling at home.”

When ABC News asked Tianna why she’d asked for a disabled dog for Christmas, the girl had an empathetic and heart-breaking answer.

“Because I’m very different in school. I’m the only one who walks with a cane, and I wondered if I got a disabled dog, she would know the same feeling.”

Already, the pit bull is making a difference in the lives of the two special girls. Gianna has a love for animals that keeps her calm and Tianna bypasses her anxiety by explaining Carmella’s disability to people.

“[Tianna’s] able to chat about the dog and explain what happened to her,” Politco-Corry said. “It definitely opens up the doors.”

In those moments of her adoption, Carmella went from being a disabled pit bull nobody wanted to being the perfect match for a couple of little girls that needed to know there’s nothing wrong with being different.

[ Photo by Dana Polito-Corry ]