Abigail found her 4-and-a-half-year-old mutt, Milly, at the Animal Welfare League of Charlotte County.
"He goes on walks all the time, and he's still crazy, but he's a good kind of crazy," Abigail said.
Abigail and her mom fostered Milly during Hurricane Milton. Just a few hours in, they both knew this dog wasn't going back to the shelter.
"He's so good with our cats. He's so good with our dogs. It's just, we couldn't give him back. He's too good," Abigail said.
Abigail and her mom are what the AWL would call "foster failures."
"A foster failure would say, you know what, I'm going to just adopt. A very happy failure," said Stephanie of the AWL.
After the shelter suffered flooding during Hurricane Ian, Stephanie and the staff wanted to get ahead of Milton.
"We didn't have electricity. We didn't have running water. But we still had 300 animals to care for here," Stephanie said. "So we reached out to the community, and they definitely answered the call.
Stephanie said the shelter was able to get 400 animals into emergency foster homes before and during Milton.
Sixty seven of those animals were adopted as foster failures, but Stephanie says that number increases every day.
"I mean, he's a big love bug and teddy bear," says foster failure Theresa of her 0-month-old Belgium Malinois named Bear.
Bear provides Theresa with companionship when it's needed most.
"Comfort, yeah. I'm sleeping a lot. I'm healing from an infection and everything, so, he spends the whole time in bed with me all day long," Theresa said.
While failing doesn't sound too fun, in this case, the adopters and the animals are OK with that.
The Animal Welfare League of Charlotte County is located at 3519 Drance St. in Port Charlotte. You can learn more about the AWL at its website here .