Pete came home at midnight with a puppy. He'd been waiting to close the office after a board meeting by hanging out at a local lounge. While outside, a small gaunt puppy came up behind him, licked his leg, and sat down looking at him. He scooped her up and she promptly fell asleep for the next few hours. She stayed sleeping in his arms until he came home. We tried for about 2 seconds to put her in a crate but opted for the sleep instead. She instantly found a sleeping Austin and curled up in the nook made by his legs.
The next morning Pete took her to the vet who reported she was about 3 months old and had probably been out for at least a week she was so rough. Her hip bones stuck out like an old milk cow, her short hair was freckled with fleas, she had worms, parasites, a bacterial infection, etc. Initially thinking Pete might be able to take her into the field with him, or that Katie had expressed interest in a dog to travel with her, she got fixed up.
Once all her ailments had been cleaned up, she became an active and spunky little puppy! The vet said she was a Staffordshire Terrier, commonly known to most people as a pit bull. I began doing research and was intrigued that, though they get a bad rap for people aggression, that trait is actually an aberrant pit bull characteristic. Taking the roots of the dog's development in dog fighting, the trait of people aggression was actually selected out of the dog. Owners couldn't have their dog turning on the audience or themselves, though the characteristic of dog aggression has been bred into them. Not to say they are all dog fighters, but I found that information intriguing. Anyone wishing to read more about the breed might check out www.pbrc.com, a rescue site designed with grounded education on the breed in mind.
Anyway, we decided that wouldn't work for Katie (who has 4 cats already) or our family and we were left with the option of finding a family in about a week (before we left and no one had the time to care for her) or turning her into animal control, and almost certain death sentence in Dallas where I've read 30,000 animals were euthanized in 2009 alone. Another site quoted it as 1 every 3 seconds. Haven't done the math, but either way it's unreal. I spent the week casing shelters from Dallas to Austin with no luck. It was discouraging.
The morning we left, Pete was frantically fixing my computer with a computer tech and mentioned Trinity. His brother had recently lost his pit and might be interested. He said at the very least, if it came to taking her to the shelter that he'd take on fostering her to find a home! Then, later that day I got a call from Pete that a family he'd worked with trail building this summer would take her! She was to be a special addition to the family celebrating a new beginning. The eldest daughter, who had been on dialysis her whole life, received a kidney a couple of weeks ago from her mother and they were now clear to have a pet in the home. I'm so pleased! Pete went over and saw her after her first day there and said he found her sleeping with the girl on the couch, snuggled in on her chest.
I love happy endings and beginnings.
