Week 34 - 52 Photos - Favorite Photo in 2014

Oh, man.  What a thing to do to me!  Favorite photo?  How am I going to choose just one.  Everyone else has that same problem I am sure!

I have been going through photos and photos and photos.  There are so many.  Nature photos, vacation photos, family photos.  And finally, I knew it immediately when I saw it.

This is DiNozzo.  Not just DiNozzo, it stands for  so much more.  All the dogs we see who don't make it to people like me.  About 9,000 in the Baton Rouge area, if you add in all the cats in who are euthanized each year as well.  (Sidebar:  For your tax deductible contribution this year donate to the small local shelter, not the HSUS or ASPCA where most of the money goes to salaries and advertizing. )

DiNozzo is a dog who should not have survived.  He was a product of a puppy mill breeder, who pumps out litter after litter.  We can't do anything about them because we are not enforcers of the laws, we are a private non-profit rescue. 

DiNozzo was thin and weak.  But he was healthy.  He was not the first from this  person, nor was he the last.  There were two before him and two after him, before McGee landed in my hands.

McGee came a year later.  This time he was more starved, weaker.  He had 43 blood sucking ticks.  Worse yet, he had heartworms.  We were not sure he would survive. 

He did, and I have spend about $5000 keeping him alive. Even now, he thinks he is ravenous and needs to fill his stomach immediately with whatever is handy. He eats fabric, metal, plastic, paper.  Soft things, hard things.   My things, most of them.  He has destroyed so many of my books, papers, patterns.  And they don't always come out in the normal manner.

These bassets are not my chosen breed.  Nor were they what I wanted after I lost my beloved Greater Swiss Mountain Dog Dutch.

But they have grown on me.



Besides, who can resist those faces?