The dog was abandoned in a quarry for 18 months.

Dolorosa cringed and backed away, her eyes fixed on the long, green pipe Eugene Galea was holding as he reassured the dog no one will harm her anymore.

As soon as he threw the pipe out of the front door, Dolorosa wagged her tail and leaped forward, put both front paws on the man’s lap and stared him in the eye, tongue hanging out, waiting for him to rub her back.

Just two weeks ago, the mixed-breed springer-type dog was covered with fleas, tied from the neck with a chain in a quarry.

Mr Galea, 44, was passing by to collect wooden planks and his heart went out to the dog.

He asked the quarry owner why the dog, registered as Raley, was tied by the neck and not taken care of.

I cannot understand how people treat these creatures like objects

The owner said someone had abandon­ed the dog in his quarry about 18 months ago and she had attacked him when he approached.

Mr Galea suggested spraying the dog to free her from the fleas but when he returned a week later, Raley was still covered with the blood-sucking bugs.

“I told him that if he would not look after her I would but he didn’t want to hand her over because she was a good guard dog.

“When he nodded – after some more begging – I picked her up and fled, giving him no time to change his mind.”

Back home, it took Mr Galea and his daughter Alexandra two hours to remove the fleas one by one, shave the dog and wash her.

Mr Galea called her Dolorosa because of the sorrowful life she had led. In just two weeks he has succeeded in calming the terrified canine down and help it gain confidence.

Dolorosa jumped around, wagging her tail, as he explained that it now takes the dog just a few minutes to trust a newcomer.

Mr Galea recalled how a couple of days after he saved the dog, she bit both his hands fearing he was going to strike her after she littered the corridor. But she soon realised Mr Galea meant no harm and kept nudging him and whining, begging for forgiveness.

Mr Galea noted that the dog had not attacked him; she was only defending herself.

It was only on Saturday that he realised the dog had probably been beaten up by a flexible green pipe because her cheery mood suddenly changed into fear when she saw him going out in the yard holding a similar pipe.

“She went crazy and would have climbed up the wall like a cat, if it could. I could not understand what was going on until I realised I was holding the pipe. I am now trying to show the dog that she shouldn’t be scared of the pipe and that no one will hurt it anymore.”

Dolorosa has, in the meantime, been seen by a veterinarian and it has transpired that she was initially owned by a person who handed her over to someone else when he moved house.

This other person was meant to take Dolorosa to an animal sanctuary but instead abandoned her in a quarry.

As Mr Galea sat on a chair in the hall of his house in Lija petting her on the head, the dog kept licking the scars on his hands.

At one point, the man ordered her to sit and shake his hand and the dog obediently lifted her paw and rested it on his hand.

“I cannot understand how people treat these creatures like objects,” Mr Galea said, shaking his head.

He has another dog, whom he had found in 2011 abandoned in a box in front of St Francis Animal Centre in Ta’ Qali “just like a baby left in a cot outside a children’s home”.