You hit my weakness in asking me to talk about my dogs. They're my favorite subject :) I can imagine Ella feeling us coming. We adopted her in a whirlwind of pieces of a puzzle coming together. We saw her picture 7 days before picking her up, and confirmed the adoption just a few days before picking her up. There seemed to be a lot of energy bringing her toward us, and I would believe she could feel it happening. Her story in our family actually started 2 years before she came to live with us though.
My first dog as an adult was a white german shepherd. I adopted her as a 2 year-old adult from a bad home. She was the absolute, undying love of my life. She lived to 15 years-old and was a lymphoma survivor (16 months in remission at the time of her passing). I miss her every day. When I lost her in April 2011, I felt the pull to adopt an older dog instead of puppies in the future. At the time we still had 4 other dogs, including one older dog we took in when she was abandoned by our neighbors. Over time, we lost that girl and added the pit bull puppy my husband and I had been dying for. In January of this year, the girl that was originally my husband's dog before our marriage passed away suddenly from cancer. It was an insidious one that didn't give any indication it was there until it was too late, so we had no treatment options. The same day we found out she was sick we had to let her go.
Suddenly we were down to a very manageable 3 dogs, but all boys. The absence of an older adult female was palpable. A month after losing Honeydog, the urge to find an older female became strong again. I wanted a shepherd or shepherd mix. I still miss my girl every day. I had filled out an extensive application with the white german shepherd rescue of phoenix, and particularly said I wanted to help a dog who was unlikely to be helped by someone else. As a veterinarian, I've developed a HUGE soft spot for elderly dogs. They are the sweetest, most loving creatures in the world. My husband was searching for the website through which I had applied, and typed in the search terms "german shepherd rescue" which brought up the adopt-a-pet website. Ella was featured there. Not only was she an older girl, with a beautiful smile, she seemed to be exactly the kind of dog that would appreciate a loving home, but may be unlikely to find it since she had a "handicap" (ha!). She also happens to look exactly like the mixture of my girl, Hopper, and my husband's girl, Honeydog. I've attached pictures of them so you can see what I mean. Not only did the random internet search bring us to Ella instead of where we started, but the weather was forecast to have a nasty storm the day we drove 5 hours from Flagstaff to Pie Town to pick her up. Ominous grey clouds followed us the whole drive, but we never hit one drop of precipitation until after we were back home.
Ella is by no means a handicapped or elderly dog. If no one knew better, one would think she was 5 years old. Without looking at x-rays, you'd never believe the arthritis she's battling. When she first came to live with us, I carried her up the stairs to our bedroom at night, and down to the living room in the morning. After the first week I gave up, because I would go up or down right after moving her to find her following me back down or back up on her own. We also have a large backyard that is flat at the bottom, but sloped up a hill. The very first weekend she roamed the whole yard checking it out, hill and all. Her favorite place to sit is on the ottoman at the foot of our chair, and she climbs up on the bed at every opportunity. She puts up with our very playful and exuberant pit bull with great patience. She's incredibly loyal to me, and I have faith that she would go to the end of the world to take care of me if she thought it necessary. Fortunately, the situation has been me taking care of her instead. I ran a full blood panel on her when I first got her, making sure all her organs were healthy, no valley fever, and no tick fever were present. I also took x-rays of all her limbs. She does actually have one good leg. :) I took x-rays of her chest to check for heart disease and cancer. She came up healthy across the board. She received injections to help her remaining cartilage stay healthy, received acupuncture and laser therapy. Now she is maintained on glucosamine, fish oil, anti-inflammatory medications and pain relievers. She's also pretty itchy, so she eats a hypoallergenic (fish-based) food and gets Claritin every day for seasonal allergies. Those seem to help. Just last week she got her teeth cleaned so we don't create heart disease from bacteria in the blood stream.
She's a pushy old broad :) She will bulldoze over the other dogs to get onto my lap or snuggle in the bed. She has no qualms about asking for what she wants, and acts as though any attention is a gift from heaven. I've never seen such a happy dog. She's truly amazing. I've used her as a story of hope and inspiration for friends and clients about no matter how many times life puts you down, or how long you have to wait, eventually things can still come your way.
I've attached several pictures. I'm not sure if the first 4 are working. If not, I'd be more than happy to send them again.
I will always be impressed that Fur & Feather invested such a large sum of money in a single animal. I know how hard that must be to make the decision between investing a lot of funds in saving one animal or less money to save several. In this case, the return on investment (amazing quality of life and a long life) have been incredibly worth it. I am really happy to have Ella here and I think she is equally happy to be here. I know she had food and shelter and nice people around her at Fur and Feather. The one thing that couldn't be given in that situation was a large amount of attention from a human that didn't have to be shared with dozens of other dogs. Even sharing with 3 butthead boys in my house is far less sharing than she did there. No matter where I am, she's always no more than 2 feet from me. I have faith she will be at my feet and on my heels for several years still.
Cheers,
LeAnn
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