The aim of animal rescue facilities is for the animals to recuperate and find homes as quickly as possible, although occasionally not all of them do.

The adorable Big Mac displayed signs that it might take a while for him to find a family when he first came at the McKamey Animal Center in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Despite being a huge dog, the animal was having trouble adjusting to his new surroundings at the shelter since he was so anxious around strangers.

The shelter’s advance manager, Lauren Mann, said to The Dodo:

Although we don’t know much about her past before coming to us, it was clear that she didn’t immediately trust others.

Lauren would bribe him with sweets to let him out of his kennel or while he was in the play area so she could approach him after earning a little of his confidence. After his owner chose to turn him in because he didn’t have time, Big Mac officially joined the shelter in December of last year.

The shelter’s volunteers saw that Big need a kind and understanding individual who could help him see that not all people are terrible. But as time went on, the timid Big Mac eventually overtook the other residents of the shelter as the oldest.

Fortunately, Big Mac was able to find a permanent home after spending more than 260 days in the shelter thanks to a miracle that no one could have predicted.

One of the volunteers consented to take the timid little dog into her house, but after a few days she developed a deep affection for him. As a result, she did not think twice about adding him to her family and went through the appropriate channels to adopt him.

As Lauren said:

My coworker reported that when she took him in to take care of him, he slept for 12 hours straight the first night.

He was so self-assured that he began playing with his home dog and even want to play with the house cats.

In her words:

He performed a 180-degree turn, and generally, he was a wonderful dog.

However, Lauren and her team wanted to do something special to honor her emotional adoption moment before completely leaving the shelter.

The staff gathered at the front door to applaud the dog as he left the premises for the final time. Everyone was ecstatic because Big Mac was finally getting the life he deserved after such a long wait.