By Roz Sarton | January 28, 2026
Meet Bruno. He had a pretty terrible start in life. We found him living in filth on a 2-metre-long chain attached to a falling-down, dangerous shed by a house in Hoi An. He was nothing but skin and bone then; the skin sagged off his spine, and there was not an ounce of muscle on him. He had not left that chain since he was a puppy, it had left marks around his neck, he did not know how to walk properly in a straight line and had not run in the three sad years of his adult life.
Adding to his neglect, he had the scar, which he still bears, running down his spine from what must have been a horrific injury, and obvious bacterial infections in his eyes and on his skin.
Despite all of this, when we met Bruno, he was a gentle, soft and kind dog; he just wanted to be loved. He had many underlying health issues adding to his problems, and spent the first ten days of his new life at the vet clinic, where everybody fell in love with this gentle giant’s soul.
Finally, we got to bring him back to the shelter, and he felt what it was like to move more than a few metres freely! We watched as he learned to walk properly and then run and build muscles, he looked like bambi at first, all gangly and uncoordinated but he soon got the hang of it and started to LOVE his walks, having zoomies in the sand dunes!
Bruno did not know how to be a dog. He didn’t speak dog very well, he was soft and gentle with the pack when he first met them but he didn’t understand them, as time went on he began to learn body language and to play with them and to acknowledge all things around him, he loved watching the cats running and jumping around through the fence and desperately wanted to play with them too.
At Christmas, tragedy struck as Bruno managed to break through a door into the cat room, picked up five of the cats, and shook them to death. I don’t know if he meant to kill them or if he was just playing with them, but either way, he couldn’t stay living in that close proximity to the cats.
Since then, Bruno has been living in kennels in DaNang with very little exercise or contact with humans and none with other dogs or animals. It is no life for a wonderful, energetic young dog, and he desperately needs to get out of there.
It is incredibly hard to find him a home in Vietnam, as he is a big, energetic dog who needs some training, which people here do not have the capacity for. Please can you help give this lovely animal a second chance at the life he deserves? We are desperate. We will cover the costs of his vaccinations and relocation, etc. We just need to help this dog.
Can you help Bruno? Either as his adoptive forever-family, a temporary local foster, or a donor – anything you can do to help him would be amazing. Please contact us if you can help this sweet boy.
