Show off your PUPPIES!!

chadgard

@Chad- Reading Mini's story has made me posting this thread completely worth it. I can't imagine what you must have been feeling at that time. Mini is so lucky to have found such a loving owner in you and I know she probably feels so much love from your family every day, though I know it usually feels like they give us so much without asking for anything in return.

At the end of Sophie's life, I hope I have been able to give her a just a FRACTION of what she's given me.

I'm so glad to hear she is adjusting well. Give her hugs for me!

It would be hard to give Mini anything in proportion to what she's given us. On the other hand, people have tried to kill at least her twice that we're aware of...

She has adjusted well. It's been 3 years now, and most of the time if someone visits, they don't notice she's blind until they notice she has no eyes...

With Sophie, or Mini, or any pup that wiggles into our hearts that far, it's impossible to give back what they gave. We can only hope to be worthy of what they give...

AmandasaurasRex

The other day, I said I would post about Mini...

Mini is my St. Bernard/Lab mix. I've had lots of pets in my life, but she has connected with me like no other. And she is quite the inspiration!

Mini was given up by a family into a kill shelter. Being a large mixed-breed, 10 month old puppy, she didn't have much of a chance. However, a woman who was trying to get out of fostering dogs happened to be in volunteering walking dogs one day. Mini was on the euthanasia table, already sedated, when the tech was paged for an emergency. He happened to leave the door open, the foster parent saw her, and couldn't let her die. She saved one more!

Two weeks later, I saw a listing on PetFinder for her. When I met her, I could tell she was something special. I adopted her, and managed to loose my car keys on a bathroom stop for her on the way home ('twas about a 2 hour trip). Here she is the day I adopted her:


We clicked very well, enjoyed puppy school (even though she was a bit too old for her class...) and she helped me train for a 30 day wilderness expedition in the Rockies.

One day we visited an old college friend in upstate New York. It snowed. A lot. We went for a walk - she always loved the cold. Suddenly, she darted off into the woods, dragging me on my stomach about 200 yards from the road. We stopped at a shivering, hypothermic 2 year old girl next to a tree. The girl had, ironically enough, toddled out a dog door un-noticed, and likely would have died of hypothermia if Mini hadn't found her!
Mini w/ droolsicles


Skip a year or so, and I started dating my now wife, after years of flirting at each other at work. I'm a little slow sometimes... She had Maynard, shown in my earlier post. Puppy play dates played an important role in our courtship!

Then we bought our farm. Yeah, before we got married. We like to do stuff out of order. Anyway, on our farm is a pond, and the puppies like to play in water! Our farrier was over with two of her dogs, so we took Mini, Maynard, plus her two down to romp in the pond. We had recently adopted Falkor, our great Pyrenees, but he had been abused in his prior life and was still afraid of everything.

We romped for a while, then it was time to go in. I was about to click the leash back on Mini when a deer decided to run by. Off Min i went after the deer. I tried to follow, but the deer trail diverged in the woods, and I couldn't. We went back home, figuring she would return. However, this was the first (and only) time she had EVER been off our property off-leash. Everyone else wasn't too concerned, but I was distraught.

20 minutes elapsed, then I got a phone call. "Hi. We have your dog. it looks like she's dying. She's bleeding from her eyes." Yipe! Being new to the area, it took me a bit to understand the directions. She had gotten off our property by about an 1/8 mile, though by road it required a couple of miles of driving. We got to her and she was lying, bleeding from the eyes, breathing shallowly and wimpering. Once she sniffed me, though, she perked up some.

We called our regular small animal vet, but being a Sunday, we had to leave a message on the emergency line and await a call back from the on call doc. Our farrier had our alpaca vet's cell phone number, and called her. She agreed to meet us at her clinic and away we went. She though she had run through a thorn bush or something, and torn her eyes. We decided to rush to the Purdue animal hospital, 2+ hours away. No pain meds this whole time, for fear of messing up potential surgery.

The Purdue folks discovered she had been shot in the face with birdshot. While we were waiting for them to see her, my brother, who lives in Lafayette (where Purdue is) came and met us. He is a police officer, and does crime scene investigation. He looked at the radiograph, and said it was clear the shot was taken form within 10 feet, was probably intentional, intended to cause pain and suffering.
The white dots are pellets


They gave us a couple of choices. We could put her down. We could keep the eyes, but she would need constant pain meds and eye drops, she wouldn't be able to see anyway, and they would shrivel up over time and have to be removed anyway, or we could have them removed.

The second choice was absurd. Why submit her to constant suffering for something merely cosmetic. I think they offered the first because of the cost involved, though at that point we had already incurred well over $1000, and hadn't really considered putting her down for economic reasons. We went with the third, and opted to have the surgery done at her home vet, so travel back and forth would be easier. Scheduled the surgery for a couple hours later (at this point it was 6:00ish Monday morning).

We had her eyes removed. It was sad, because she had such beautiful expressive eyes.


I used to often wake up saturday mornings with her on my chest (which, granted, was somewhat painful...), nose to nose, and if the light came in through the window right, could actually see her retina, and loved that.


We visited her in the hospital when we could, and she was really quite droopy. She clearly didn't like being away from the family, especially at such a stressful time.


Thus, we were certainly happy to get her home.


Mini was amazing at adapting. She would occasionally do things like try to jump on the couch, and instead be jumping on the corn pellet stove. But she just kept trying. Bonk her head on a chair, and after a moment, she'd find another route. Pretty soon, she was as cuddly as ever

though she doesn't get along so well with strange dogs anymore. If they yawn, she'll snap. I think it's tough for her, not being able to see their body language.

We never did find out who shot her. But, it only took us 3 years and 10 months to pay off the bills, thanks in large part to many internet donations from friends, colleagues, family, and even several people we didn't know.

Mini continues to be one of the biggest inspirations in my life. A truly remarkable soul!

oh my goodness, that is heartbreaking. I have a huge heart for dogs and can't imagine going through this. You are so brave and strong.

dejastar

Mini is beautiful and so lucky to have awesome parents like you to take care of her.

kristafb

Well I wanted to add my babies to this post but I can't for the life of me figure out how to add pictures to the post from my profile. so if you want to see my puppies have a look at my profile. Sams in my profile picture, hes a 6 year old jack Russell/border collie mix & my baby is Franny a 2 year old Pug-Tzu (pug/shih Tzu mix). I don't have kids so they are my babies.

deanjou59

Mini is absolutely beautiful...I just want to cuddle that dog and never stop. I am so glad you all have eachother.

chadgard

Thanks, guys.

Mini is beautiful, but it's we who are lucky to have her! And, yeah, cuddling is no problem. She's a professional cuddler. Only it's not like she just leans her 85 pounds on you - she leans, then pushes with her legs to get even more pressure! Guess we should be happy it's not Falkor that does that - it get's pretty uncomfortable at times with Mini, but if you had a 140 pound dog do that....

kritkrin

awwwww, he looks so cute as a puppy! I've never seen that pic... are there others?