Today is Snowball’s four year anniversary. Four years ago today her previous owners brought her in to be euthanized because they said she was all crippled and covered in fleas. She was literally saved by the bell. I was looking a vein to inject into when all the phone lines started to ring. My assistant had to go answer the phone. Snowball jumped down into my lap and started to lick my face. I believe my response was, “Shit.”

I am a confirmed big dog person. The only little dogs I liked were Pomeranians because they were big dogs trapped in little dog bodies. Just a few weeks earlier the husband had said that he would like a little white fluffy dog someday. I told him that I would divorce him if he ever brought such a beast into my house. So there I was staring at a little white fluffy Pomeranian. I put her on the floor and she ran around in a very un-crippled up way. She also had decided that she absolutely adored me. I repeated, “Shit.”

I had never taken an animal home from a job before. I was proud of that. I was not in the dog market. Dogs are high maintainence. At the time I was boarding the horses and had just the rabbit and bird at home.

I called the husband and asked if he still wanted the little white fluffy dog. My staff was yelling to him, “Tell him if he says no that he has to come down here and hold her while you KILL HER!” I believe there was also a solemn staff promise that because the dog was 9 years old she wouldn’t live very long.

I did try to give her away over the next few days but no one would take her. She has remained as crazily devoted to me as she was in that first moment. In the last four years she attacked a horse and got her brain scrambled when he kicked her. Just last night the husband tried to kill her. She was following me around like always but she was licking her lips loudly and slightly wheezing. It was highly annoying. I finally opened her mouth to see if she was eating something. I pulled a three inch long piece of beff jerky out of her throat. I flung it on the floor and she dove on it, picked it up, and swallowed it whole. Dog has absolutely no sense and she lives for beef jerky.

Snowball today

Happy Anniversary Snowball!