St. Patrick’s Day this past week got me thinking about how fortunate I feel that I have been to have had so many wonderful animals in my life to form a bond with.
With that being said, I thought this would be the perfect place to discuss how we are the lucky ones. After all, aren’t we all here because we love animals and caring for them?
I’ll go first with a little story about my first pet. His name was Max/Maxie or “Max -a - Million” as he came to us. See Max was bread to be a premier show dog being the beautiful Irish Setter that he was. However, when he was just a pup, an unfortunate accident maimed his face.
Having been a child at the time, the details on that part of the story are a little blurry. The way it was explained to me was that the breeder had spent an exorbitant amount of money on Max’s face to try and get him back to “show quality” hence the name Max-a-Million; however, some damage was permanent so being a show dog was no longer in his future.
Here is where our family came in. My dad was the local wisdom tooth doctor, an oral maxillofacial surgeon that had earned a reputation for reconfiguring peoples jaws/faces after terrible accidents. Our family had been looking to purchase our first family dog and my dad had a patient that happened to be friends with Max’s breeder and thought ‘wouldn’t it be wonderful if the dog with all the facial injuries went to the family of the guy who fixes faces?’ His patient put us in contact with the breeder and the next weekend Max-a-Million joined our family and forever left his paw prints on our lives.
It really wasn’t until I was older when new people would come over to our house and meet Max for the first time and ask “What’s wrong with his face?” that I ever noticed he had some “flaws.” To us, he was the best dog we had ever met and his facial “flaws” just gave his personality extra character. He made each day better just by having his loving face around. I know we’re not unique in having built a beautiful bond with our dog…but it really was lucky or maybe just destined that Max enter our family in the way that he did. I mean, how many facial doctors have show dog quality dogs with massive facial injuries?
RIP. Max -a - Million
I’d love to learn some other stories of how a pet had made you the lucky one?