When you look at this picture you can see why the word "rescue" comes to mind. This precious baby appeared at our back door on November 1, 2008. It is obvious no one cared for her in the first six months of her life. She was starving, you could feel her bones sticking out. She was flearidden and itching like mad. She had a lot of hair loss which we found out was due to allergies. Her toenails had never been cut. She also had seizures.

We soon found out that she didn't know what it was to be touched by humans. She didn't know how to play OR wag her tail. She had had no reason to wag it. And by the way, it looks like someone did a very sloppy home job of docking her tail, a procedure we don't even believe in. And we have to wonder if they even used anaethesia. What kind of hell had this baby been through? How could anyone look at that sweet, pleading face and say "No, I won't take care of you."

We didn't really want a dog. We were still hurting from the loss of our other baby, Freya. Not to mention that we didn't have the money for a dog in case something medical was needed. I told Bill that, if God wanted us to have a dog, we would know it. When this baby showed up on our doorstep we didn't really think we would keep her, we aren't "fufu" dog people, we like bigger dogs PLUS we still didn't have much money and it was clear this little dog would need lots of medical care to repair what some *&%$#*(s had done to her. We called the shelter to come pick her up. They didn't call back for six days. But as the days passed and we considered what might happen to her if we didn't keep her, we decided to go ahead and keep her and it was the best decision we ever made. But not one made without a lot of prayer and help. I said that if God wanted us to keep her, He would help us find the money. This little dog was not well and needed a lot of care.

The first thing we did was take her to Dr. Doyle at the Hartland Animal Hospital and he gave her a once over, gave her her shots, weighed her at 5 pounds and learned that her name was Pita. Bill thought of her name on the way there. Since she was such a handfull at first he came up with P-I-T-A or Pain In The Ass. Don't get us wrong, we were already in love with her but she WAS a handfull. It was also a play on PETA - an organization we do NOT support. I will say more about that later.

We didn't worry about her seizures at first until it was clear she would have them all the time. The first couple we believed might be due to her bad health. Eventually she was put on phenobarbitol which won't always stop them all but will lessen them and their severity.

She wolfed down everything at first because she was starved but then she didn't eat much of anything and was acting very lethargic. For a few days it didn't occur to me that she was acting hypoglycemic. I should have seen this right away because I am a diabetic but I never had a dog with so many things wrong with her. It finally dawned on me why she was acting so lethargic and "out of it." I kicked myself mentally and worked on getting carbs into her. Also, Dr. Doyle did a blood panel and found that her liver showed signs of poisoning, which might have occurred while she was running loose. This could affect her appetite. He gave me liver pills to help build her liver back up and a suppliment to put in her food. She didn't like the liver pills - YUCK - and I barely could get any in her but after a couple of weeks she started doing better and was eating like a pig. I think the suppliments helped as much as anything.

While checking her teeth, Pita threw the worst fit and Dr. Doyle said, "You sure named her the right thing!!" It took 3 of us to hold her. Getting her blood drawn is an experience, too.

We had a certificate from the shelter good till the end of the year to get her spayed free of charge but had to wait till her bloodwork was ok and on Dec 23, her bloodwork came back perfect. She was spayed and had no problems with it. We have had to put her on additional Phenobarbitol and her seizures will be something we wil have to deal with all her life possibly. And although her hair is growing back in, I have made her a couple of "Pita Coats" to keep her warm when outside. You can see her modeling her first one above on the right, it is a reversible cloth one with bones on one side and stars on the other. She is a patriotic little dog. She even voted - well, it says she did, as you can see here.

A very important point to all this - Remember when I said if God wanted us to keep her He would help us find the money? EVERY SINGLE TIME WE NEEDED TO TAKE HER TO THE VET OR BUY SOME KIND OF MEDICINE THE MONEY SHOWED UP. I do NOT believe this is a coincidence, it is not the first time this has happened in my life. Whenever I really needed money, it would come. No, it would not fall out of the sky but sometimes I find money I didn't know I had, could have sworn I didn't have any but there it is. And it is almost always so close to the amount I need that it can't be an accident. But God has a sense of humor, He usually makes us come up with the change. Like the time we had a bill for $61.14 due and didn't have the money, that day we got a check in the mail for $61. Yes, we had to come up with the $.14. THAT has happened way too many times too. So I am very well assured that God is watching over us and our little Pita. I don't know why He sent her here but maybe He knew we had a hole in our hearts that only she could fill. We still miss Freya, and Pita isn't like her at all, but she's filled our hearts with joy and we love her very much.

THIS IS AN UPDATE. We have had Pita 6 months now, she is a year old. Our farmers' market started on May 15, 2009, and we took her with us because we were afraid to leave her home so long by herself. A young man came through and saw her, pointed at her and said, "I know that dog, it's Taz." I said, THAT DOG? and he said, "yes, I knew the people who used to have her." I said, "you've seen THIS dog in HORSE CAVE?" "Yes, its name is Taz." he said again. When I asked him who owned her, he said their name was Keeton but they didn't live here anymore. He said he didn't really know them, he was at his friend's house when he saw her and said the people didn't treat her very good, that they kicked at her and hollered at her a lot. He was glad we had her now and said she looked a lot better.

Then I asked him if they called her Taz cuz she spun around like a whirling dervish and he said yes. Sounds like our girl cuz just a couple of weeks ago, I told Bill we should have named her Taz cuz she spins like a Tasmanian Devil. She has done that since she first came and it isn't like she is chasing her tail although she does that, too, but a lot faster than that. Now I'm glad we didn't name her that, it has a lot of painful memories maybe. She still hasn't gotten over her fear of spray bottles or her fascination with tshirt bags. Makes me wonder what they sprayed her with to terrorize her so much. If you spray anything around her she ducks her head and slinks off like she did something bad. I am still trying to get her over that. But she loves tshirt bags, when I empty the waste cans that I line with them she follows me around smelling them and will play with them if you "get her" with them.

And now she is Pita the Produce Pup. She is the market mascot, an advocate of adopting dogs instead of buying them. She will have to get used to the goings on at the market, her first day was exhausting to her because she isn't used to so much activity going on or attention. Everyone loved her. She's our little girl.

Pita has some things to say now...

Many people think that shelter dogs have something wrong with them. In some cases this is true but sometimes people just dump them out and they get picked up. And they think that a dog who has been through a traumatic experience is "broken beyond repair." But dogs are very resilient. They are very forgiving. They don't dwell on things like humans do. They take things as they are and if placed in a loving home and treated well, it is very rare that a dog will never learn to be the loving pet you want them to be.

Some people say stupid things like, "they know we are trying to help them" or the reverse, "they don't know we are trying to help." Neither statement is true, dogs only know that what is happening to them at that moment feels good or doesn't feel good. And they respond to that feeling. If you treat them well, they will respond well. It might take some time, some dogs haven't had the experience of anything good in their life and will have to adjust to it but most of them will.

Some people think that buying a dog from a breeder assures them of a healthy pet. Not so. So many breeders and puppy mills have bred their dogs to the point of illness and genetic disorders are passed down. Disorders like hip dysplasia, breathing and respitory and other problems are often found in these dogs. And these problems can be expensive and heartbreaking. Yes, you may find problems with a shelter dog but the point is, you never know what you are going to get no matter where you get your dog. The risk you take with a shelter dog is no more than with a purebred dog. And a shelter dog has been under the care of a veterinarian, not all breeders are as careful with their puppies" care. Many of them are in it for the money, the less they spend for shots etc, the more profit margin they have.

The best thing about adopting a shelter pet is the feeling you have knowing you have enriched and possibly saved the life of the animal you have chosen to love. That's a feeling you can't get at an animal show no matter how many ribbons you get.

I wasn't a shelter dog but I almost was. If Dad and Mom hadn't decided to rescue me that's where I would have ended up. I understand that there would have been a good chance of being adopted, little dogs are easy to place. And I had a lot of things wrong with me that they would have had to deal with at the shelter but they would have gotten me back to health before putting me up for adoption. I got lucky that Mom and Dad were the ones that took me in cuz I got specialized one on one attention. But, as hard as the shelters work to provide the care their animals need it isn't as good as having a real home. So, won't you please consider going to your local shelter if you are wanting a new someone to love. They need you and the rewards are endless.

We used to put links to the ASPCA on this website but have taken them all down because when I recently went to their website, there was a feature there called "Ask an Expert." I clicked on that and it took me to a page where I could specify which type of animal I was wanting to ask a question about. When I clicked on "Dogs," it took me to a page where there were questions and answers. I looked for an email link so I could ask my question. I didn't find one. So I found a way to contact them, which was hard since they didn't have a contact for general questions, and told them that I didn't think it was funny for a website to advertise they had an online contact, then when you went there, they didn't really have it. This is the letter I got back from them. It is obvious they don't intend to answer many questions...

"Hi Pat,
Thanks for your comments. The reason we don't have submission forms for our Ask the Experts sections is due to staff availability. Our questions are answered by actual veterinarians and behaviorists, who are busy helping animals every day. If they are unable to answer questions for a period of time because of their workload, we remove the submission forms, so questions do not get left unanswered.

Regarding the ASPCA's contact information, on our Contact page you can find a phone number which you can call if the email addresses provided do not apply to your topic. The reason we no longer provide an email address for general inquiries is because it resulted in several hundred emails a day. Hiring additional staff to handle these emails would take funds away from much needed programs that help save animals. We are sure that as an animal-lover yourself, you understand this decision."

I wrote back and told him that when you have an online presence you should offer an online contact, not one by phone. People do not like to call and keep having to "Press One" repeatedly only to end up with a mechanical voice. I also told him that, if they didn't intend to offer an email link then they shouldn't say they do. To me that is lying. I am not saying that you should not support the ASPCA, but I do want you to realize that they will probably not answer you. I was surprised to even find a way to contact them as I had went there several years ago and they had no way of online contact at that time that I could find. I will support my local shelters etc myself. I won't trouble them again.

I said I would say more about PETA and why I think they are useless. Recently, Kentucky went through a terrible ice storm on the 3rd of Feb, 2009. As of this writing, 2-11-09, there are still people without electricity. Except for the National Guard, not much of anyone showed up to help. We are absolutely grateful to the Guard. But one thing that was pretty apparent through this and something that I noticed through situations like Katrina etc, was that there is nothing done for animals. If you have animals, you are expected to leave them to die. Bill and I were told by someone with the Munfordville shelter that we had to leave our animals and come to the shelter or we would die that night. Nice guy. I'd like to tell him that I am still alive, no thanks to him. We didn't leave our animals, (we also have rabbits, besides Pita).

Back to PETA... Instead of doing what they do, stupid things like worrying about people eating animals, or worry about people wearing fur, they should do something worthwhile like getting better laws for the protection against REAL animal abuse or have provisions made for them in times of emergency. Instead, they do things like I found in this news article:

Headline: "PETA: Spearfish school should be called Sea Kitten"

SPEARFISH, S.D. – The activist animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has asked school officials to change the name of Spearfish High School to "Sea Kitten High School." The new name would "reflect the gentle nature of its current marine namesake," the organization said in a letter to Steve Morford, Spearfish High School principal.

PETA said the letter is part of a new Sea Kitten campaign aimed at children. If children were taught to refer to fish as "sea kittens," reflecting that fish, like cats and dogs, are "individuals" that "do have friendships," fewer fish might be killed for food or sport, said Pulin Modi, a PETA spokesman. "We want people to realize that more fish are killed each year than all animals combined," he said. "They don't have the sympathy of more popular animals like cats and dogs."

Morford said he did not want to share his feelings about PETA. "Obviously, it's nothing we're taking seriously," he said.

 

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