my girl Dixie

[Crazy4Chicks]

Today while watching my dogs play in the sunshine and making totally fools of them selves I could not help but kinda shed a little tear for my little three legged cripple dog Dixie. Even though she has a harder life than the rest of the crew - she still holds her own with the boxers.
This summer "pops" as we call her will be 5 years old.

Here is Dixie's story :
A few years ago Dixie got out of the yard during the july 4 fireworks ( while we were out of town ) and some people who were outside drinking -thought it would be funny to kick her and leave her for dead.
When Dixie was found the next morning in the gutter wet,hurt,bleeding we rushed her to the vet to find she had a broken pelvis on both sides, minor head injury, and perment damage to her front leg. We were told to put her to sleep, but that was not something I was willing to hear.
Dixie got better got stronger and went on to be a great momma to 10 healthy babies - even with 3 legs she managed to keep up with all of them LOL

Dixie is a beagle/bassett hound mix and one of the best friends I have. She always growls when you try to wake her up and she is the laziest dog when it comes to going out in the morning, and with only one good front leg she still finds a way to dig a hole and get out of the yard when given the chance LOL but I could not imagine life without her.

Just thought I would share my girl. Do any of you have one of those pets that has over come hardship?
in the picture you can see - both front legs but only one is able to be walked on- we never did have the operation to have the leg removed vet thought it would be alright to leave it

Julie

 

[texaschickmama]

AWWWWw, what a sweet story about Dixie. I hope those people can't sleep at night. What animals they must be. Pure scumbags I would think, and I would have taken it out of their ars, if it was me. Maybe, kick them, leave them for dead in the gutter bleeding. Oh, sorry, I said that outloud didn't I.

 

[hypnofrogstevie]

I do. I have a lab/chow mix and we rescued her in NC along with cujo who was my birthday present. Cujo was abused because he was a pitbull. The guy would spray cleaner in the cage and get it in there face and eyes. When I asked for cujo they kept saying "are you sure?. you need gloves to handle him because he will bite your hand off." I said yes and took him. The guy took a metal chain and wrapped it around cujos neck choking him. he threw him in the car. The lady said to me please take bashful (the lab chow mix.) She is going to be put to sleep if no one takes her today so I said yes without my mothers permission and took her. Well as we went back to NJ I took the metal leash of cujo and he sat on me and slept the whole way home without a growl or showing teeth. He was the best dog ever. I loved him so much. He got sick and would not eat. He had parvo and that made my whole world crash. He passed away 2 weeks afte rmy B-day. I kept bashful because she was the only one left from that shelter who did not catch it and she was behind cujos cell, I named her mollie and she is the closest friend I got. Cujo was burried with his playtoy and blanket. I named bashful mollie and I know cujo will never forget the family that he shared his 2 weeks with

 

[newchickowner]

Yeah I have a story, I'm sorry but it's long!

This is Gallant Foe. When I went to work at a dinner theater in Kissimmee FL, his nickname was "The Freak". They told me that hardly anyone could ride him because he would raise his head as high as he could with his nose in the air and haul a$$ so fast that no one could control him. He was given to me as a "project" to see if I really knew as much as my resume said I did. (it was an inside joke around the barn at my expense. No one believed that I had as much experience as I had at my age.) I was to work with him and get him into the show. They also wanted to make a lesson horse out of him. I learned his story and found out that the show director at the time "broke" him herself. She took him into the round pen, saddled him too tight, tied brand mash bags to him full of empty aluminum coke cans, tied coke cans around his ankles, and thought she'd just run the "spunk" out of him. Well, as an Arabian, his endurance outlasted hers and she gave up that tactic. So she got on him in the arena and if he didn't do what she wanted she whipped him with a crop and spurred his sides till he was bloody and jerked the bit so badly that she cut the corners of his mouth. As you can imagine, this made him virtually insane.

So, I took him on. My condition was that I was the only one allowed to touch him for anything. Including feeding him. They accepted and I started my work. Well, in about six months time he was as gentle as a kitten and I had him in several different acts, even an act that he was the "rear horse". I had a special call that I would make to him when I came to work in the afternoons and I would bring him a few carrots everyday. One day he looked up to see me as I called him, and he called out to me. My good friend was there to hear it and it brought tears to both our eyes! He had never trusted anyone enough to have a bond. I was so touched that he trusted me enough to winnie to me!

There was another problem, the barn director was pretty new to horses and the farrier she had coming out wasn't very good. All the horses left side hooves were at a different angle as the right sides. For those who don't understand, try running laps with a high heel shoe on one foot, and a clown shoe on the other. Then you'll have an understanding of what these horses had to live with as a farrier. Many horses were constantly going lame. Foe in particular also had scars from the cans that were tied to his feet and was under constant medication to keep infection at bay. Well I guess the place had enough of the costs and wanted to get rid of him, so I begged to take him home to my Aunt's horse farm. Since he was like mine anyway, they let me take him home! I was so excited! But I only had him home for a few months and he ended up dying of a blood clot in his intestines. I was away and didn't get to be there to say goodbye. My Aunt called me after. I was devestated. The next day I rode the new "rear horse" I trained for Foe's act, and as soon as I went up into the rear, I broke down and cried. I miss Foe. He was only 10. It brings tears to my eyes even now to think about him. I loved him so much!

Here we are in our "rear" act. (I just scanned the pictures in, so the quality isn't good, sorry. It was hanging on my wall in my living room.)

Here he is in our quarantine paddock just after I brought him home. Isn't he pretty!?

Here is another horse I brought home from that place. He had thrush (hoof rot) so bad that most of his right hoof was gone almost all the way up to his coronet band (where the hair starts above the hoof) We took him home, had our farrier work on him, and in about a 1 1/2 years his hoof was completely thrush free. Because of the lack of hoof wall, he did have a mild founder though (the bone on the inside of the hoof rotates, it's very painful for horses) but he eventually fully recovered. They gave him to me under the conditions that I only let very advanced riders on him because he is a Lippazzoner and he knew how to do the airs above the ground maneuvers. But as you can see in the pictures the 4-H girls loved to practice some moves they saw me perform at work!

sorry this post is so long. It's hard to talk about the animals that I loved so dearly and make it short. There were other horses that I brought home from that place, but these were the one's that had a story. Thanks for reading mine.

 

[Crazy4Chicks]

oh I love the story's thank you everyone...

I remember seeing the hores show air above ground moves once it was totally breath taken - those horses are amazing -
i am glad your foe was able to have a great life and finally found trust and love before he passed.

sorry parvo took the life of your friend Cujo - it can be very hard to watch them slip away


Julie

 

[ilovemychickies]

I have a long story too. I hope you don't mind me telling it!

I had a horse named Fame. Fame was a beautiful chestnut colored Arabian with a tiny white star on his forehead. When I first met him, he was living in a pasture that was tilted like this: / and there was very little grass. Well, after many years of that, his hooves, legs, and back got horrible. One day his owner asked if I would mind taking care of him while he went on vacation. I said sure. That was the begining of a wonderful friendship. Fame would come up to me and ask in his silly way for some carrots or some suger cubes. He would stick his nose as far down my pocket as he could reach. Silly horse. Anyway, his old owner ended up selling him to me and my mom since he saw how well he and I got along. The first thing we did was get him off that horrid pasture and put him in a level pasture. We would work him everyday so that he would be fit again and so that I could eventually ride him. Long story short, he finally got to where we could begin teaching him about the saddle and about being ridden. Well, right before we were about to start training, we found our perfect house and moved. After about a month or so of unpacking stuff and putting everything away, we were ready to start training up again. I remember that a couple of times he bucked me off and scared the poo out of me.

We still weren't able to ride him yet, but we were getting closer. I was so excited about riding him in the future. I was going to be able to take him on trail rides and ride him around the pasture with my mom and her horse. But then, on one Monday morning, we went outside to feed and saw that Fame wasn't coming for his breakfast. He was standing in a corner of the pasture with one hoof off the ground. We went over to see if everything was ok and saw that he had somehow hit his leg so hard that it was swollen up about 2 times its normal size. We called the vet out to see if there was anything he could do. He gave us some pain killer and we decided to wait for a few days to decide what we should do.Well, a few days came and went and it was time for the vet to come back out. We decided to end his suffering and to put him to sleep. You could see it in his eyes that he was in pain. It was one of the saddest days of my life. I remember that right before the vet put in the needle, Fame gave one last sweet horsey whinnie to me. That is what sent me over the edge. I cried and cried and cried that whole day. Man, just thinking about that one last whinnie is making me sob right here at my computer. It was as if he was saying "Goodbye" and "I love you" to me. I loved Fame so much. RIP my sweet Fame.

I am so sorry to hear about Foe newchickowner. He sure was a beauty! Fame was abused when someone else was trying to train him. They didn't do cans, but whenever he would stumble or buck the lady would twist his ears and whip him real hard. I remember that he still had scars on his ears. Go figures that he didn't like his ears being messed with. If someone had done that to me, I don't think that I'd like people messing with my ears either!

Crazy4Chicks, what kind of scumbag would do that to a dog?!? Man, I hate it when people abuse their animals. It makes me wanna do this

for hours and hours and to give them a piece of my mind. I am so happy that she recovered! She is so cute!

Inuya, I am so sorry to hear about Cujo. I want to do this

to whoever was so mean to Cujo too! I can't believe that people can be so mean to a defensless animal. It makes me wanna

!

 

[newchickowner]

Awww! Sorry to hear about Fame and Cujo. The only thing that eases my mind is knowing that these sweet animals aren't suffering anymore. You know, I've always said that when I die, and my dearly loved animals aren't there to greet me, then I didn't make it to heaven! And I sure hope I do, cause I can't imagine eternity without them! I love them all dearly!

Crazy4chicks, I'm glad you were able to save Dixie instead of putting her down, what a wonderful story.

inuyashalover21, I'm also glad you saved the chow mix from being uthanized too. There sure are a lot of animals in shelters these days with all the housing foreclosures. People are just abandoning their cats and dogs and there just aren't enough homes to adopt them all! It's sad.

 

[Sherry]

I have a boxer named Dixie. She has a problem when any other dog gets near me, she wants to fight. I lived in Northern Va at the time. I called my vet to ask a question and the receptionist tells me the vet went to LA and brought back a van full of Hurricane Katrina rescues. A few days later I'm at the vet and I go see the rescued dogs. There were two of them that looked identical and one of them picked me. So I brought him home and named him Looter.

Dixie and Looter got along pretty well, better than I thought she would. He had bad hips, couldn't jump or run very well. I brought him home to 54 acres in WV, fattened him up, he had room to run and play, started developing muscle tone. I would stand in the yard and cry watching him run until he could almost keep up with Dixie. It got so good, she didn't have to stop and let him catch up anymore.

Last October he got to where he would eat then vomit. Next day he'd eat and run and play. Then eat and be sick again. I knew, when that boy can't eat, it's gonna be bad. Turns out he had a diaphragmatic hernia. Evidently he'd suffered great trauma during/after Katrina, probably hit by a car. We lost him on the operating table.

We had two wonderful years with him.

 

[GAhen]

Sweet Sweet stories...
Here is one of mine....
I run a small pet rescue in GA.
I have rescued 100's of dogs, a number of cats, one rabbit, one goat, three pigs and a couple of birds over the years.
All are so special in their own way.
The picture above is of Meme, a 14 year old Chihuahua abandon by her "family" when the person who loved her died.
Meme was turned over to Animal Control and around here that is not a good thing, except for the kind lady that works in the front office. She knows me and called me when Meme (then called Rat) was brought in.
She said that Meme was so frightened and so pitiful......She asked if I would come and get her.....I did.
When I took Meme for a check-up, my Vet said.....Well Tammie, this one is going to be yours....no one else will want her.
I disagreed and placed her on petfinder as I do all my "foster dogs" waiting for their new homes. As time past I did get a few people interested in Meme, she is tiny, barely 5 pounds, but nothing I felt comfortable with. You see, Meme just did not warm up to me very quickly like most of my foster dogs do. That concerned me.
She was very "stand offish". So I did not want to send her off to a family when she was acting like that.
A few months after I brought her here she made a break through. As I was sitting in my chase lounge chair with many of my other little rescue babies all around me, I felt a tiny nudge at my shoulder. I turned thinking it was one of my many little dogs.......but then noticed it was Meme.
I wanted to cry....I reached up to pet her and she even gave me the tiniest little kiss.
Now Meme sits with me from time to time, greets me at the door when I come home and gives a little bark in the morning for her breakfast.
Seems my Vet was right after all, Meme is mine......She won my heart!

 

[nccountrygirl]

That sweet story brought tears to my eyes, I'm also an animal lover and if my DH would go along with it I too would have a house full. God Bless you for your devotion to animals that might not have a chance otherwise.