AUGUST 2019
I COME TO FIGHT. I DON’T BARK. I BITE! WWW.THETEXASLAWDOG.COM 817.775.5364
The Dog Days of Summer
There was a quote I saw recently that went something like this: “People who say money can’t buy you happiness have never paid an adoption fee.” We have three rescue dogs, each with their own stories to tell. They each offer our family unit something different. They add something to our lives and our relationship that you cannot find anywhere else. Cleo, our goldendoodle, is the funniest and smartest of our household (including the humans). She was mine prior to getting married. I rescued her in the summer of 2016, when she was 3 years old. She had been returned to a breeder. Her former owner returned her because of “aggressive behavior.” If she had any aggression, I got it in check, and she is the sweetest girl now. She already knew several commands, including the “high-five.” Cleo is now 6 years old, and she is awesome and visits the office from time to time. She thinks she is a serious squirrel hunter. The office staff figured this out quickly after she decided to leap into the blinds. I don’t know what she would do if she actually caught one. She is always the blonde gal sitting next to me in my truck when we take a quick trip to Sonic in the evenings for ice cream or a run to the Home Depot. The Home Depot thinks she is their mascot in Arlington. She’s almost human-like, and I really love that girl. Alison rescued Sugar in 2013. Sugar had been living outside in Wichita Falls and ended up in the pound with her brother. Alison went to adopt her and found out that the owner did not pick her up because she Meet Cleo, Sugar, and our newest addition, Derby.
had eaten one of their chickens. When Alison saw her in person, a sign on her cage said that Sugar “smiles.” Despite having been abused, scarred from being beaten, timid, and severely underweight, Sugar smiled at Alison, and that was it.
Cleo, Derby, and Sugar
Sugar needed love, and Alison gave it to her. Alison visited and stayed with her for weeks at the shelter
before she was even allowed to bring her home. And then, Alison had to really work with her. Sugar would not walk through doorways. Once, she laid down in the parking lot of PetSmart until a bystander offered to help get Sugar back into Alison’s Jeep. She’s a big girl, and Alison is tiny, so forcing Sugar to go through doors wasn’t an option. With lots of love and patience from Alison, Sugar is the greatest dog today. She is my buddy, and I love her. She is the one waiting and watching at the front window of the house when I drive up from work, smiling and showing those pearly whites when I walk in the door, and, best of all, she shares that Great Pyrenees glitter (fur) on everything we own. Everyone needs a little glitter, right? Derby is our newest addition. We’ve been foster parents for Doodle Rock Rescue for one year now. Alison is the one who got us involved as foster parents. Over the past year we have fostered Tux, Bella, Judge, Moose, and a random pit mix that showed up in the neighborhood. We have mostly served as fosters, but we have also been engaged in other aspects of the organization as well. Doodle Rock called in March asking if we could take Dog #33. We had no idea what this meant or what we were getting ourselves into. All we knew was that several rescues across the nation were going into a puppy mill in a small town in Kentucky to rescue doodles. We were instructed to show up in a storage unit parking lot in Dallas to pick up Dog #33. We were asked to name our dog ahead of time for tracking and veterinary purposes. Due to derby season being around the corner and Alison’s love for horses, Dog #33 became “Derby.” Derby was slowly removed from her cage and wrapped in a quilt to keep her from biting us. She was a sad sight. She had been in a crate her entire life and had a cast of matted fur made of urine and fecal matter over her entire body. We immediately realized that her body hurt due to this condition, and she had been eating anything in her crate just to survive. We shaved and bathed her, and in just a few hours
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