A couple was out driving together when they spotted a dog chained up near the road. She seemed sad and defeated, all alone in a little dog house, and even though they kept driving, they couldn’t stop thinking about her. Eventually, they had to go back to see her.

After asking around, they discovered the dog’s owners had passed away from COVID-19 three years before, and their son didn’t come up to the house much anymore. A man who came to take care of the yard work had been putting food and water out for her every few days, but other than that, she was completely alone. The poor dog had spent the last three years outside with no one to comfort her. The son had been wanting to give her away but figured no one would want her — and as soon as they heard that, the couple knew what they had to do.

“We asked if we could take her, and he gave us the go-ahead without hesitation,” the couple wrote in a post on TikTok.

The dog, later named Xena, was scared to go with the couple at first. She was starving and covered in fleas, ticks and scars. After a little bribing with food, though, they were able to get her into their car and on the road to her new life.

Xena was still nervous when she arrived at her new home, but as she met her new brothers and sisters, her tail slowly started to wag. After making an appointment to take her to the vet, they gave her a bath to wash away the dirt that had accumulated on her after being outside for three long years.

“She is such a gentle soul and you could see in her eyes how she trusted us,” the couple wrote on TikTok.

At the vet, Xena was surprisingly calm and seemed to trust that everyone around her was there to help her. They gave her medications and instructed her new parents on how to get her healthy again. After that, Xena was able to start settling into her new life and experiencing all of the wonderful things she’d been missing out on.

Not long after her new life began, Xena got to go to the beach for the very first time, and her reaction was absolutely priceless.

“We watched her run for the first time,” the couple wrote on TikTok. “She was the cutest thing trying to run, she kept tripping onto her legs and it was such an incredible moment to watch her run free.”

As Xena frolicked around the beach, her new family never worried once about her running away from them. She made sure she could see them at all times and rarely ran far from them. She knew that all of this was thanks to them, and clearly plans to stay close by their sides for the rest of her life.