When Tin and I moved to the Spirit House, I had gone through some stuff. It’s a laundry list of losses and does not bear repeating, but I did something that I never thought I would have to do and in moving to the Spirit House, I had rehomed my dog, Loca, and two cats, Bam Bam and Blackytza. Two years into the new house, a mom at Tin’s school told me about a free puppy. I didn’t want a free puppy. I was still barely treading water.
Tin wanted a free puppy so I said we would go look at the puppies. This is what the puppies looked like:
We came home with the puppy and named her Stella. Less than a month later, we learned the mama dog that had been rescued from a kill shelter had noncontagious mange and that there was a good possibility she transferred it to the puppies. So the rescuer woman said she was going to come by and give Stella meds for free.
The rescuer came to the Spirit House and gave Stella the med and Stella went into shock. I held her in my lap and worried that this puppy that we were already so attached to was going to die right then and there. She pulled through but we realized that she could not tolerate the meds – even though all the other puppies in the litter had. I said let’s just see how this plays out.
Stella started losing her fur on her head. As it got worse, I couldn’t see the humor in having a bald headed dog given my circumstances, and so I called the rescuer and said, “Help!” She told me to get a DNA test on Stella to see why she couldn’t tolerate the meds. I did, the results said that Stella was part Siberian Husky, part Dalmatian, and part White Shepherd. And she could not tolerate the meds.
Which meant that Stella was fathered by a different dog than the others in the litter. Which meant that I had to bring my free puppy to the vet to get treatment. Which meant that once a month for ten months, Stella needed to be dipped at $300 a dip. Which meant that Stella was a $3000 free puppy.
Recently, after having to deal with the fact that Stella’s body was inflamed and she needed to go to the Emergency Room and having half her body shaved. I noticed this:
The spots! The Dalmatian in her that was hiding in plain sight – albeit she is an airhead. It’s like you wait around long enough and more will be revealed. This is true.