Balch Springs Animal Shelter in Texas, US, took to Facebook last year to announce that Javier had been given up by his owners due to their child’s behaviour. “This is Javier and he was surrendered today because his kid would not do his homework,” the post read, before going on to explain what a “big friendly guy he is.” A screenshot of the post recently made it onto Reddit, where people were disgusted over the parents’ decision to punish the dog for issues relating to the child.

“That poor pup. He doesn’t deserve to be tossed out because a kid is being a kid,” one wrote, while another added: “How about being an empathetic human and not punishing the innocent being in that situation.” A third added: “It’s an animal, not a toy that you can just take away when your kid is doing poorly in school.” Fortunately, the tale did have a happy ending, and the shelter wrote a follow up post announcing that Javier had found his forever home with another family. Let’s hope they give him the life he so desperately deserves.