Roach infested dog gets second chance.

Ripley sure is one lucky dog. On Oct. 19, the two-year-old poodle was found in a Louisiana ditch near a no kill shelter. Shelter workers noticed Ripley and picked him up with a towel because they weren't sure exactly what they were rescuing. His fur was so grossly overgrown that he looked less like a dog and more like an ... it.

Once they figured it out, they got the dog to a vet and called Tracy Lapeyrouse with My Heart's Desire, who took him in. Live and dead cockroaches were snarled inside his matted and overgrown mane, and his mouth was so covered by fur that his rescuers didn't even know how he managed to eat.

But now, thanks to some Good Samaritans, and one (or possibly several) seriously effective razors, Ripley has a new leash on life — and is garnering national attention. "I keep telling people he looked like the Elephant Man," Tracy, who heads up My Heart's Desire rescue group in Houma, La., which is currently caring for Ripley, tells Tonic. "This is probably the most grotesque grooming issue I've ever seen, and I've been doing this for 10-plus years."

Lapeyrouse fortuitously named the 5 1/2 pound dog Ripley, "because I was driving home with him and he needed a name and I kept saying no one would have ever believed this was a dog. It was like Ripley's Believe it or Not. Then I thought, Ripley!"

To read this article in it's entirety, please visit: http://www.tonic.com/article/believe-it-or-not-cockroach-infested-dog-gets-second-chance/