What is your Dogs story?

[elegy]

luce - i had wanted a pit bull for a long time after working with a number of them during college, but it took me a number of years to be in a position to properly own one. i went to the shelter looking for an adult male pit bull, white with dark brindle patches, and natural ears. somehow i came home with a complete maniac. she has been an amazing dog to own. amazingly hard, amazingly wonderful.

mushroom - when my miniature poodle that i had died, i was looking for a companion for luce. doberkim hooked me up with mushroom, drove him to meet us so i could see whether he and luce would get along, and they turned out to be perfectly matched. he came home a year after i got luce.

and harv, my old man. i wanted an old dog, and he turned up on petfinder at a shelter an hour or so away. at first they wouldn't let me have him because they don't adopt pit bulls outside of their county. i emailed the director and told her why i'd be a good owner and sent her a ton of references, and they let me have him. he's wonderful. he gets younger the longer he's here. and more annoying.

 

[noludoru]

Middie... well..... if you want the long version, I've said it before, go look.

Short version:

Neighbors on adjoining street didn't spay their Springer bitch, let her run loose.. OOPS wonder where those puppies came from. They gave them away to the first person who cooed at them and never followed up--I happen to know more than one of them who have bounced from home to home. The people they gave TWO of the pups to lived right down the street and they never checked in.

Middie lived on a chain and by a few months before I got him was not being let off of it... only once every few weeks. I did my best to get them to change their ways and gave them oodles of things for him that got "lost" or locked in the shed. They hit him on the head with a newspaper when he did anything even slightly wrong (getting on the porch for example), wouldn't give him shots or dewormer, dealt with endless barking ALL NIGHT AND DAY LONG that drove the neighbors nuts. There's the tip of the iceburg... anyhow

I kept trying to pawn him off on other people and checked out rescues (the handful I talked to wouldn't take him..) and after a few months of that when his treatment was just getting worse and worse I decided I'd take him. It took a bit, and many of you lovely, lovely, WONDERFUL chazzers helped me along the way.. the kind words and help means a lot to me, still, and I won't forget.

He came home with me.. his Lyme #s were through the roof, I got nearly 100 ticks off of him.. ended up breaking down the second day I got him because of the ticks, it was terrible. He marked anything and everything before he was neutered... his coat was disgusting... He was also a MANIAC before I got him... he could pull my 150lbs right off my feet and would continue to do so when on a leash, and anyone smaller got dragged until they let go.

Now he's glossy, at a pretty good weight, clean, smells good.. It's such a change. Last eyar at this time he was sleeping outside in a plastic dog house that he didn't fit in .. in the SNOW with only a 10 lb bag of wood shavings to "keep him warm." Now, he's cuddled in bed with me, sneaking his way under the covers and getting his cold little nose in my ears and his paws tangled in my hair.

before

After

 

[mrose_s]

oh nolu, I love Middie's story. I'm just so glad you got him.

I've posted it a lot but here is Buster's story.

Mum went into town one day, did the shopping. When she got home she had also picked up a gorgeous little cattledog mix puppy she found whining and screaming in the car park inthe middle of town.
She couldn't leave a puppy there so she brought him home, he was covered in ticks and fleas and had a wormy belly but he had a collar on so we looked for his owners.

I still remeber the first time I saw him I decidede he was going to be mine. I love him so much it makes me cry. I am so thankful that no one claimed him, I am so thankful no one wanted him when we tried to rehome him. He's my best buddy and i can't imagine life without him.

Sophie is our ten year old girl, we got her the day my mums marriage fell apart with my dad. We were going out to look at pups when things all changed and she wasn't going to go.My brother said lets just go get a dog, do something normal.
Sophie we got from a BYB, not knowing any better at the time. Her parents were pig dogs, her mother looked just like her only smaller, her dad we just saw a photo of, a big black dog standing over a dead boar.

This breeding was wasted on Sophie lol. She has aboput as much prey drive as a deckchair, the first time she saw a kagaroo she just wagged her tail at it then walked off.
When we got to the breeders we looked at the 2 remaing pups. 4 months old, Sophie. A shy but gentle girl and her sister, a black girl that was quite skittish. We knew we'd have issues with Sophie's skin as she was a big white dog, we knew she had a weak back end but we figured if she was going to have all these problems she may as well be looked after by us.

So we handed over our $40, put her int he back of the car with my suister and I and went home. Lifted her out, put her in the yard. She just sat, after a couple of hours we thought she might get burnt so we picked her up and put her in the shade. She sat there till dark, so we pickedher up and brought her inside.
SHe'd never been near a house before. It took her quite a while to understand she was actually allowed in.

Now I look at her, full of herself, confident, best natured dog I've ever met. Can tolerate puppis and kids jumping all over her if they do. Such a darling old girl, very self confident, thinks she's the queen of the world.

Mac

Mac we got 2 weeks after the death of my sister's dog. My sister was crying herself to sleep everynight so we decided she should have another dog to focus on.
I begged them to atleast check the shelters but they got her from a pet shop. Covered in fleaas but so cute.

She was listed as a foxyX, my sister did not want a foxy, she had no interest int he breed. But she went and looked, there was mac and her sister, a little black and white girl. My sister was leaning towards the b/w girl as she was more playful when Mac wandered over to her and just would't leave her alone.
She brought her home, we looked at her and decided she'd be lucky if she was 5 weeks old, she couldn't even see you unless you were right in front of her.

From the very beginning she was bonded with my sister. She adores her to no end.

Harry
Harry was another completley unplanned dog. I was at the ag show, walking around one night when I got a call from mum
"I've got another job!"
what?
"i'VE GOT ANOTHER DOG"!

Oh... She told me about him and when I got home I expected a Buster like cute litttle 8 week old puppy.
No, I got home to find a 4 month old bumbly ACDmix, huge feet, looked like he's turn out a big dog lol but know, she's long in the body, short int he legs, long neck and still has massive feet but isn't as tall as Buster even though he weighs more.

The weird thing is, my mum always swore she woudln't have a boy dog, or a working breed. She wasn't a fan of ACD's, she had a lot of them when she was younger and it turned her off them.
SO what does she get? She gets Harry.
She met a woman at the pub, they got talking and she said she had 2 pups in her car. They're station was going broke and her husband was shooting his horses, his dogs, everything and she was trying to rehome these pups before they got shot.

um said she'd look at them and put the word out but couldn't take one herself.

Well she looked at Harry, Harry looked at her and that was it. He was hers right then and there.

She doesn't get as much time with him as she'd like, she works a lot and when she's not she's cooking or cleaing or on the phone. But he is absolutley devoted to her. She is his everything. It's amazing to see how bonded with her he is despite everything.

 

[mrose_s]

Thought I shoudl Add pics

Buster

Sophie

Mac

Harry Warry

 

[Punkygirl0101]

~Harrison-It was about 2-3 months after my dad had died. (I was 7). My mom was pretty distraught, as any other widow would be. And I guess she decided to get another dog (We had a toy poodle, and my dads female dachshund at the time). And she looked in the paper, and got Harry.

~Bradley-A couple months previously we had rescued a pregnant husky mix off the streets. She had her puppies, and they all found homes. And then she turned on two of our dogs (the toy poodle mentioned above, who was 12 years old at the time, and his daughter Emily, whose mother was the dachshund mentioned above). We had her euthanized (Which was very hard for us, we had fallen in love with her..and even though she killed our two very loved dogs, we didn't want to see it happen..but we couldn't let her kill another dog). And we got to the point a few months after it happened, being left with 2 dogs again, out of 5, to get Bradley. My mom surprised me after school with him one day (I was around 9 years old). We also got a dachshund named Janet soon after him. She was killed by a car in '04.

~Elliot and Daggett-My mom decided to breed Harry and Janet (As mentioned above)..and those two were the puppies we kept. (That was 7 years ago).

~Cartman-Seeing a pattern..my mom WAS (Past tense) a dachshund byb. She decided to stud Harrison out, and we took Cartman home. We didn't want another dog, but nobody seemed to want him because of his size..hes a very large dachshund. So we took him.

~Charlotte-In January 2004 Janet was killed by a car. She was my mom's little porker, and seeing the pattern that when one of the dogs dies, she tends to calm her self down by getting another one a couple months after, she decided she wanted to get another dachshund. I told her about looking into another breed,so we looked through the classifieds (Before I knew anything about bybs) and we looked at Beagle puppies, Wiermaraner puppies (Which my mom really loved..but the puppies were too old), and Shipperke puppies. Then the last ad we looked at was for "Chihuahuas". So we went over to look at them, and my mom fell in love with Charlotte..Who was clearly a mix..but my mom didn't care..SO we took her home.

~Peanut-It was about 2-3 weeks after we got Charlotte, and we went down to the SPCA with my mom's friend cause she had adopted a dachshund the day before and was picking her up from her spay, and of course me and my mom looked at the dogs. We saw Peanut..He was so cute, very thin. We were told he was a puppy. (My mom didn't want to get an older dog..she always wanted puppies). There was actually a drawing for him..and we won.

~Jannah-In September of '04 my dad's dachshund, Hannah, had been suffering for weeks with kidney problems..She spent most of that month at the vets office endearing tests, and being force fed...she was going through kidney failure. She died that month, she was 13 years old. And like I said, she gets a new dog when the other has passed to help her get over the losses, this time she "had to have a dachshund"..so we got Jannah from the local classifieds.

~Bjorn-I had been noticing Bjorn in the yard of a neighbor of my best friend. He was about 8 weeks old, and was chained to a chainlink fence. There was no food, water, shelter..nothing. We had walked by to go to school for a couple weeks, and he was ALWAYS in the same spot. The only water he got was from the automatic sprinklers. one day it was about 114f outside, and me and my friend decided he didn't deserve that treatment anymore (My friend knows those neighbors, and he said they are hardly ever home)..so we "Stole" him. He would have died of starvation/heat stroke/Dehydration if we didn't.

~Bob and Reese-I had joined a dog forum at this time, and was learning about what a byb was (This was 2 years ago)..And my mom told me she was going to breed Harry and Jannah. I protested, I told her not to, I told her about the homeless animals..and she counteracted by saying "Look how many stray cats we have taken in..I have helped homeless animals". She bred them anyway. I actually brought Bjorn home a couple weeks before she gave birth.

~Lucy-Me and my friends were on our way to a movie theater and we took a side street. My friend, a big dog lover, saw Lucy walking down the sidewalk. Lucy was skin and bones, the skinniest dog I had ever seen. We got out of the car to try and get her, but she ran and yelped..and ending up running into someones yard..which turned out to be her own yard. In the yard we saw another dog, a larger dog, chained up to a tree..FILTHY, and skin and bones. He had no water, and no food. And the yard was disgusting..Feces everywhere. There was a cage with wild pigeons, they had no food and water either). We ended up doing something drastic, and people were against it..since it was against the law. We hopped the fence, we let the birds out (Their wings were not clipped, and they immediately flew away), and we took the dogs. We took the large dog to a dog rescue, and he did end up being adopted, and we took Lucy to my house. She was absolutely terrified of people. She yelped when you touched her,she bit. We worked on her for months and she slowly got more accepting. She still has issues with strangers touching her though.

When we first got her:

And after she got healthy:

Shes still a very picky eater..but shes a porker now! lol

and even though most of our dogs came from bybs, or my mom bred them and was a byb...all of our other animals are complete rescues, and not one came from a byb. My mom used to be one of those people who had the mind set that she could only have a purebred..a purebred dachshund for that matter. But I have completely changed her views about that, actually..Lucy changed her views about that. She is very much into only rescuing dogs from now on.

 

[Amstaffer]

Athena's story, In Freeport IL the police did a raid on a fighting ring and one of the dogs seized out side the area was Athena's mom. Athena's mom had not been a fighter and was pregnant with puppies. Three days later Athena was born at a shelter and later shipped to a rescue in Wisconsin. Athena's mom was an excellent mother and got a long well with other dogs so the lady kept Athena's more and adopted out the puppies. I was just doing research on the Amstaff/PB breed (I had just lost my last Rottie to cancer) and I feel in love with this spunky little brown dog........She has been with me ever since

Saladin was part of a genetic program by a lady south of Chicago to genetically engineer a beast that would steal the heart of anyone who came in contact with it. This experiment was very successful because Saladin seems to have this affect on everyone he meets. Actually I got him from a very nice breeder south of Chicago and he doesn't have a "story" but he does steal hearts!

 

[pafla]

I always wanted a dog but my parents didnt think dogs are for apartments.When I was around 15 we were supposed to move to house and my parents promised I can chose a dog.I wanted a male doberman or amstaff.But things didnt work out and we stayed in apartment.A couple months later my mum showed up with a pup.I still remember not quite beliving it.I came in kitchen and there was a shoe box in corner and a puppy in it.She was so small.My mother bought her from a woman who was selling her on fair with her sisters.she said that she will stay small and be very sharp.As it turn out she was fear aggressive to everyting that moved plus neurotic and we had some really hard times.But I love her and even do I met a lot of people who dont understand why I put so much time and effort in her it pays of when she lets strangers pet her,or hangs out with other dogs.She is a velcro dog.She lives to be with me.Rea was a suprise.She walked in our yard in sea-house on my 18 birthday.I saw her in village before and belived she has owners.She was such a friendly pup.Total opposite to Tea.I loved that about her.We didnt have conditions for another dog and honestly I had problems even handling Tea.But we never found owners and so she stayed.She learned me to love dogs that are always on move and who have independant nature.It sometimes looks like my dogs are total opposites in most things.But they have in common their need to keep me on my toes all the time.Their is never a boring they in owning them.