Aren't We the Lucky Ones?

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?

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What a wonderful story! Here is my contribution. One spring day, I was out for a walk in my neighborhood and I found an unkempt Pomeranian wandering the streets. She had a collar and tags that said “Foxy” with a phone number, so I was certain that I was just picking up a neighbor’s dog and not making a life choice. I called the number and the person who answered said that her original owner had gone into assisted living and the person on the phone could no longer keep her because she did not get along with her pit bull, but “please don’t bring her to the pound because they will kill her.” The shelters were in fact full and there was not much of a market for a sickly 8 year old diva dog who did not like other dogs. I decided to bring Foxy to the vet to get her checked out and found out that most of her teeth were rotten and that she also needed a hernia operation. My intention was to get her well so that I could find a new home for her. But as luck would have it, we fell in love with her as she was healing and became her forever family until she was stricken with dementia and eventually crossed over rainbow bridge years later. I was so devastated by her passing that I could not initially even think about committing to another pet and instead started doing volunteer work at our local animal shelter and fostering. The void left
from not having my own pet eventually led me to THS as well. So one random, lucky walk truly changed my life. I continue to foster and pet sit to honor her memory.

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@Kelly and @Southernsitter … thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing two heartwarming stories, I hope we will hear more of the same from our community.

Animals are at the heart of TrustedHousesitters it’s why we exist, why we do what we do and why our community is so very special. Stories like yours remind us of how we can help pets live their best lives and in return they enrich ours beyond measure.

@Kelly I have been owned by 6 of these precious creatures in fact my heart Springer Holly “lead” me to pet sitting when she left us over 13 years ago … a broken heart healed and a life full of pet joy.

Thank you both

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