just another day: A very special day!

Tomorrow is a very special day for someone in our house, can you take a guess??? It's Winston's birthday!!

"Who, me?"

Yes, you! Sweet boy! Here's a little background on this guy...

When John started grad school, it was gruling. He started in the summer time and would go 2 nights a week from 6-10 pm. Then we would have church one night, I was teaching a kids class, and we both worked full time! I was getting lonely so I decided we needed a dog. I am not so impulsive that I would just go grab a dog, so I called our local humane society and started volunteering.

I would go out there once a week or so and just take dogs out to their park and play with them for a while, all the while scoping out the talent for my potential new best friend! If you've ever spent any time with shelter dogs, you know that they tend to be shy, or spastic, or even aggressive. It's not their fault, they just haven't been loved :( But I brought my love and out I went with those dogs. I went less in the winter, and started to actually get discouraged b/c I hadn't met that special someone yet...

And then one sunny afternoon I was sitting in a chair out in the park and a scrawny hound dog came over and set his chin in my lap. It was literally the sweetest thing I had ever experienced! He was a doll, slightly goofy, kind of shy, my kind of dog. I asked about him and found out that he had been there for about a year! I guess I'd just never seen him before. I played with him for a while and started thinking of how I could convince John of his worthiness.

There was one blaring issue with this dog. He had a pretty bad case of mange. Not just regular-stinky-needs-a-bath-mange, serious demodectic hereditary mange. We were assured that he would be treated, b/c he was practically recovered, and we would be given any meds needed to clear it up. Great! Sign me up! We were told we could pick him up the following week...

Do you see how it looks like his paws are ginormous and his undercoat is kind of gray? Well...we figured out that he does not have gray hair, his skin had turned black. After this he even lost a large patch of hair on the top of his head exposing more black skin. Oh and all 4 of his paws are extremely infected. We still had no idea. We just knew he smelled terrible!

We were referred to a very good vet and became REG.U.LARS. When we would walk in it was a chorus of "William!!" "Oh look at William" "Here's that sweet dog!" Oh yeah, and his name was William! He went in to the vet every 3 weeks for a skin scrape, to see the amount of mites (yes, mites) living in his skin and I bathed him every 3 days in dawn dish soap followed by a medicated soap. The days after his bath, John and I would hold him down and soak his paws, one at a time, in a solution to help his infection. He got an oral syringe of Ivermex (cattle grade, super concentrated parasite killer) every morning and evening and antibiotic pills every night. Which I had to pry his mouth open and shove down his throat.

And then we found out we were expecting! We got William in late May and realized we were getting another family member in June...The medical issues continued the entire summer. I even cried to the vet that I could not do this, I could not take care of this lump of hair! How in the world could I take care of a child! And I certainly couldn't take care of both at the same time! Some one had to go. She said she would take William if it came to that, she was so sweet and she really loved him...and so did I.

Somehow, through a LOT of encouragement, and enough vet bills to build a Hilton in our veterinarian's backyard we got through it. The appointment arrived that announce he no longer needed antibiotics. Next we dropped the foot soaks. Then the Ivermex. OH HAPPY DAY! I think it was winter. We had a healthy dog, he is the sweetest dog I've ever met. And he went along with the name changed when we announced to him one day that his name would now be Winston because the baby would be snagging up that family jewel.