Featured Happy Ending: "Pickles"

I adopted Pickles shortly after losing my best friend, Cody, to a rattlesnake bite. I was having a really, really hard time dealing with it. My daughter told me that I could not let that stop me from "rescuing" dogs. I don't really consider myself a rescuer because I can only deal with one dog at a time when so many other people can really do a lot of good. But, I can tell you that when I saw Beverly's posting of Pickles, all I could do was giggle. He was so comical and sweet looking. Now that he's in my life, every day there is something for me to laugh about. His first visit to the vet was memorable. Everyone in the vet's office loved him and had to pet him and play with him.

Our first "trick" was to teach him to shake. As soon as he tried to lift his paw, he lost his balance and fell right over on his side. He's got it down pat now, though. Beverly had told me that he had never slept on the bed before but he had slept on the couch. The first week here, I heard a thump in the middle of the night, turned on the light, and - bless his heart - he had fallen off of the bed and was standing there with a confused look on his face. He's got the bed thing down pat now too.

Pickles loves my daughter's dog, Benjammin'. Bennie is 8 years old and about 80 pounds of mutt. If Pickles can't get him to run around and play, he spends the entire day cleaning Bennie's ears for him. Poor Ben! He just rolls his eyes at us and sits there and takes it.

Pickles earned the nickname of Little Mickey because both he and my friend Mickey are short and stocky, have bad eyesight and waddle when they walk. Mickey loves Pickles so much that he

has modified his front and back decks on his house so that Pickles can run through the house, onto the front deck and on to the back deck and we don't have to worry about him getting lose and getting lost.

The vet is doing some research to see if there is anything that can be done to help Pickles' eyesight. He gets around pretty good but his eyesight is bad enough that he occassionly runs into things. I don't know how much more his hard little head can take.

One thing Pickles has plenty of is love, hugs and kisses

-Stephanie