The little dog was dangerously thin and scared to death when I brought her home. I remember her trembling in the back seat of my parents' Buick as I tried to make friends with her. We got back to the house and she went in the backyard and ran around a bit. She came back in the house (too soon) and relieved herself under the coffee table. I remember when I washed her that her little spine was showing through her skin and it was then I noticed her tail had been broken. She wasn't quite a year old.
The woman I bought her from called her Madison. She told me over the phone that she had been her grandfather's pet, and that she was already potty trained. Maddy didn't respond to her name for a week. She was scared to be around anyone but me at first and when I took her to the veterinarian's office he told me he would give her shots but that spaying was out of the question until she put on a little weight. I bought her Caesar puppy food because it came in a container the dog could eat of and would be less of a mess. She carried the dish across the living room with her to eat it and almost always ended up turning it over on the floor.
So how did I end up paying someone $250 to rescue the dog they'd been neglecting?
It started around 2004 or so I when I moved into a duplex with my college roommate and my skittish barn cat got sick and then ran off after I let him outside too soon. I was at Laura's grandparents house in Mid West city one weekend and I was complaining about not having a pet. I've always had pets. Our family had two dogs and two cats when I was growing up and in my mind, that's just the way it should be. As was typical, she got tired of listening to it and started looking through the paper. There was an ad for a Shitz Tsu mix dog. We drove to Purcell and met the dog that would end up being called Hermione. "Mione" was at this person's house in a side yard covered in fleas and eating garbage from a pale. The woman at the house called her "Sunshine"---a name that was just too stupid for words and was quickly abandoned. There were about thirty purebred dogs at this house and they all looked groomed and well cared for...and then there was Mione. I bathed her once before we even put her in the car, twice more before I would take her to see the Vet. The only thing we could tell about the dog at first was that she had really awful hair---as did the girl in the Harry Potter movies---and it was either that or Retzia. (Spelling? It was a charactor in an Opera Lj was singing an aria from.)
After Mione figured out the toys were for her, and learned to walk on a lead, she turned out to be a great dog. She'd play fight and fetch and she was just cute as she could be. Her only drawback was the garbage eating-dog habits she'd learned as a puppy. I had to have velcro on the kitchen trash and just keep food trash out of all the trash cans. She raised my two cats and they got along swimmingly. During my senior year, I broke my leg. I lived alone by then and since Mione liked to dig for gold in the litterbox, my parents took her home as a 'foster dog' until I could keep up with that sort of housework again.
I moved back home and not too long after that, Mione got in some garbage and gave herself pancreatitus. My parents, who had fallen in love with her, heroically paid for her to be treated at the OSU veterinary clinic and she got well but by this time she had ceased to be my dog and started really being their dog. I moved out of the house and let my parents keep her, taking the cats with me.
I found out in 2008 that my landlord was a registered sex offender. Between that and waking up to my front door being wide open one morning I decided I had to get a dog. I really wanted another Shitz Tsu but I ended up getting talked into a Pekingese by an insightful kid at the SPCA. Jasmine is a wonderful little dog. She came to me house trained, and quite nice and very sweet. It turns out she is also very old, going blind, and mostly deaf. She is a lousy guard dog but otherwise lovely. After I bought the house last year and Mom managed to get all the way into the house, into the back bedroom and had to wake Jazzy up to get her attention, I decided to get another dog.
I had my tax refund from buying the house in hand and this time I was not going to get a rescue dog. I wanted a non defective dog. No mental issues! No garbage digging. No puppy dog dementia. I didn't want have to nurse another dog back into sanity and I already had one geriatric dog. So I started looking in the paper... only baby puppies. I didn't have time to really potty train a dog. I started looking Craig's list and got sucked in by an ad for a black and white Shitz Tsu. I called the lady and she wanted $250 for this dog. She also told me that she had been her grandfather's pet and that he had died and that she had papers.
I don't know why I fell for this. I can't imagine selling Izzy (mom's yorkie) to a stranger for money. If I really didn't want the dog, I'd have been looking high and low for a friend who was good with animals to take her in. So I shouldn't have fallen for it and talked my mother (who is just as softhearted as I am about sad abused puppy dogs) into going with me to "keep me from doing something stupid". I do know that God has ways of making things happen. Someone hurt that little dog. Someone broke her tail and didn't give her enough to eat. For some reason, God sent me to her even though I didn't think I wanted her. I'm not one to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty good with scared animals. She needed me. The old dog, who I also didn't think I wanted at first, has been a big help with her. She taught her how to walk on a lead, how to go outside to relieve herself, and generally how to act like a dog. I think Maddy would have been a far more difficult dog to rehabilitate if I hadn't had Jazzy around. I also think it was God's way of getting his tithe out of that government stimulus package. :)
Maddy is a great dog. She's filled out nicely, she's healthy, and she actually barks when someone comes to the door. She also likes to play fight, herds cats, is loyal little sweetheart that I wouldn't trade for a hundred non defective dogs with genuine papers. Maybe one of these days I'll stop thinking I know what I want.
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