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| I Love Buttercup - or - Why Rescue Dogs are better than Pet Store Dogs!! |
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| Tara took me back to meet her because she knew I had a thing a for poodles. I took one look at her and almost cried - tears did come to my eyes because she did look so pathetic. She was standing up and hopping and crying - for someone to get her out of there. I had another foster dog at the time - Ebony, who later became Eddy - and I didn't know if I could handle 4 dogs, but I knew I had to have her. You can always make room for 1 more it seems. And I am SO glad I did! They had called her Bubbles, but it didn't suit her at all. Buttercup became her name. I will always be eternally grateful to Tara for finding her for me. She is the best giver of love to me and me alone that I have ever had. She only loves me and no one else, and that is a super feeling. But this story is about why rescue dogs are better than pet store dogs - it is because of their eyes. When you adopt an animal from a shelter, or you rescue an animal from unsavoury circumstances their spirit is completely disconnected from their body - in order to survive their previous life experiences they've had to completely shut down their soul. They've had to be an animal and just survive. So that they could get to the place where they can be WITH YOU, so that you can rescue them. And then after they've been with you for a while and they start to trust their surroundings and that no one's going to hurt them anymore and that the food they're getting is great and that it comes at regular intervals, and they know that every night they get to sleep on a comfy bed right next to you - or in Buttercup's case - on my pillow right next to my face - they allow their spirit and their soul to come back into their body. And you get to witness this fabulous transformation come into their eyes. Sometimes it happens in a matter of days, and sometimes it takes months. With Buttercup it took a couple months altogether - but it's been amazing to watch her personality emerge, and watch how she interacts with the world. That's why rescue can be so addicting - you get to see that happen every time you rescue an animal, and it's because of you that it happens. It is the intangible quality of that transformation that makes rescuing the priceless vocation that a lot of people find themselves to be the choiceless - I can't think of the word, I'll have to come back to this part. It's also amazing that she was a stray dog because she absolutely does not stray! She sticks so close that I don't know how she ever got lost - I wish I could know what her life was like before, in some ways. In other ways I don't - because then I might have to give her back. She is a senior dog - she's already maybe 10 years old, so every moment that we have together is SO precious. I don't know what I'll do when she dies. I really don't. I'm worried about that day. I hope it's a long way off. |
| This is a picture of Buttercup before I met her - when she was at the shelter just after she'd been shaved |
| This picture was taken a couple weeks after I got her |
| Buttercup came into the SPCA in Dartmouth in August 2003 as a stray dog. She had been picked up on the Prospect Road. They had to shave her fur down because it was full of mats and burrs. She had luxating patella, and when I met her she had bad kennel stress. She was crying at the top of her lungs at every person who walked past her cage back in the observation section of the shelter. |
| These pictures show Buttercup in the full flower of her beauty now! |
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