One of my brothers-in-law is a tough truck driver for an oil company. While making a delivery to a trucking company one Friday, in the lot he noticed a dog tied under a truck on a short rope, a bowl of dirty water and only ate what the workers threw down. He was told that a previous worker left the dog and never returned for it. He came home that night and told us. We immediately said to go back on Monday and if the dog is still there, take it home. It bothered him so much that the next day, Saturday, he couldn’t stand to wait. He drove to the truck lot but it was not open, the lot was fenced and locked. He saw that the dog was there but could not get to it. He came home, called his boss, told him the story and asked his boss if he could possibly get the name and phone number of the owner. After hours of waiting & trying, he was finally able to track down the owner who agreed to meet him at the lot and give him the dog.

The first thing we noticed when he returned home with the dog was that she was filthy, very skinny and had large open sores on top of her head and on top of both of her ears. We also thought she might have mange because while bathing her, her hair was coming out in handfuls. She quietly sat through 2 baths even having her sores cleaned. We could tell she was a yellow lab mix.

On Monday, an examination by our vet revealed she was about 1 ½ years old and in relatively good health despite being malnourished and the obvious sores. The consensus of everyone in the vets office was that the sores were caused by fly bites. She was literally being eaten alive. To give you an idea of what they looked like, our original name for her was going to be “Pepperoni” because it looked like she had slices of pepperoni on her head.

She had an odd habit of using her paw to splash water out of her bowl before she drank. We realized this must have been from having to skim the gunk off her dirty water at the truck lot to get at the cleaner water. Her sores healed but left scars that never again grew hair. She eventually went to live with another family member who had 2 children and named her Boo-Boo.

That was 13 years ago. Boo-Boo died a month ago from an infected uterus. Everyone in the family has always had a special affection for her and we all spoiled her. Not long after she came to us, we realized we were spoiling her so much that a friend commented that she was starting to look like a walking beer keg. We will all miss her terribly. God is a funny guy. One week before Boo-Boo’s death, my niece found 3 kittens behind a dumpster in town. Guess where they are now.

Lorraine from  NJ