Rescued

During my divorce, I moved to an apartment that was about a block and a half away from the Pacific Ocean. From my balcony and over the canopy of trees, I could see the ocean. If I left my sliding glass doors open (I had three! One in the master bedroom, guest room and living room.), I could hear the ocean. I loved that apartment, but I also needed something to motivate me to leave it.

That’s when Dixie came into my life. I started looking at the local animal shelter’s website. The Thursday before Mother’s day that year, Dixie was the last dog that came up on the website as at the time, her name was Weetabix. Since it was Mother’s Day week-end, I told myself that if she was still there on Mother’s Day, I would go get her.

Mother’s Day came and I went to the website to see if she was still there. I was nervous and hopeful. I knew that if she had been adopted, she wasn’t meant to be with me. When I saw her picture still on the website, I called and asked if she was still available. They told me she was. I told them I would be coming to get her.

When I arrived at the shelter, they led me to her kennel. She was so scared. I led her out on the leash and she wouldn’t come over to me because of how frightened she was. It didn’t matter to me because I knew she was meant to come home with me. I led her to the counter so I could adopt her. As soon as I brought her outside, her personality came through. She knew she was coming home. She was so excited, wiggling her whole body and eagerly jumping into my car.

Dixie has been sick for the past two years with an autoimmune disorder called Immune Mediated Polyarthritis. There have been a lot of ups and downs over the course of her illness. Due to the weight gain caused by the prednisone she has to take, this created stress on her back legs. She had to have two surgeries to repair the torn ACLs. It now appears that due to her disease, her body has rejected one of the repairs, which now means another surgery to remove the plate and screws. The good news is that the plate and screws really aren’t needed, so hopefully, once the hardware is removed we may finally have my zoomy girl back.