When rescuers with the RSPCA first arrived to help Barney, they couldn’t believe their eyes. He was covered in so much matted fur that it was impossible to be sure if there was really a dog under all of it. He needed help, and fast.

“[He was] extremely matted, with big clumps of fur hanging off of him,” Tina Nash, an inspector with the RSPCA, said in her witness statement. “The dog did not smell very nice and made me want to [r]etch.”

Poor Barney had not been properly groomed in a year and a half as his owner believed that his breed, a Russian terrier, didn’t need it. It was impossible to even see his face — he was just a matted blob of fur wobbling around. He was clearly in pain carrying around all that extra weight, and his rescuers got to work shaving it all off as quickly as they could.

The grooming process took quite a while, and when all was said and done, the team had taken 17 pounds of fur off of Barney.

“The dog had been made to support a coat weighing approximately 21 [percent] of his body weight as he moved around,” the vet who helped Barney said in a statement. “The weight of this coat would have risen considerably when the dog was wet.”

Once all of the extra fur was gone, Barney’s rescuers could finally make out his sweet little face. He was clearly so relieved to be free of all that fur, and he quickly began to thrive under the care of all his new friends.

Barney is currently living at a private boarding facility and will be up for adoption very soon. He had a rough start to life, but now that all that extra weight is gone, he can’t wait to find his forever family and start living life to the fullest.