Divorce brings out the ugliest part of humanity often enough. Those wishing to hurt each other will often use children, pets, anything at all to do so. Doesn’t surprise me at all that the dog was losing his home in the divorce (happens all too often, especially if the house is being sold and one is “downsizing”) and I can certainly imagine a child being the only one who cared enough to try to find him a good home.
We adopted a yellow Lab under similar circumstances. The family’s parents were getting divorced and selling their house, and they were moving into apartments where they couldn’t keep pets.
Their young son wrote a letter to the other kids in his elementary school class, asking if anybody was able to adopt “Archie.” My wife showed me the letter, and we volunteered to give Archie a home. You could tell by the letter that the kid loved his dog; he even mentioned that Archie liked having his tummy rubbed.
So Archie lives with us, and seems pretty happy. He gets two hots and a cot, lots of attention and tummy rubs, and at least one long walk per day.