My wife Susan has always wanted to have a dog. She wanted a small lap dog that would be easy for her to travel with alone while I was away working. A companion for her that she could easily handle. She thought that this would have to be a small dog since she has physical challenges.

We tried to adopt a male terrier from an adoption fair sponsored by the Detroit Zoo in the summer of 2008 but that did not work out for us. Sadly we had to return Dash back to the No-Kill shelter in Hillsdale County that had brought him there. The shelter actually had no room for him so the director met us there and fostered him at her home. she was a very nice lady. We had spent lots of money on food, and toys and we gave it all to her for Dash.

This past summer however, was a different story. My wife became unable to work and we filed for Social Security Disability for her online in July. A week later I was let go from my job as a truck driver from Ryder Integrated Logistics.

With no income coming in and a six week backlog in unemployment benefit determinations, things were getting pretty tight. That is when it happened.

When we were pulling in the driveway from grocery shopping with our emergency food assistance card. My wife spotted a brindle colored puppy in the neighbor’s front yard. She was drawn to it. She had to go and talk to the neighbor to see if it was okay to play with the dog.

To her amazement, they asked her if she wanted the dog! My wife asked why they did not want the dog anymore since they had it for a few days already. They explained that the dog that they already had before this one was given to them was all that they could handle and they were just going to let this one wander the streets. They were actually trying to shoo it away when she came over to talk with them about the dog. Susan was not having any of that. She was not about to stand by and watch as another loving dog was turned out to fend for itself on the streets. So she said “of course I will take the dog”.

Those renters moved out that very day and sadly took their original dog, a beautiful female pit bull with them. But my wife took the brindle puppy into our fenced in yard and played with her as I brought the groceries in from the car and put them away.

I came outside when I was done putting the food away and my beautiful wife was sitting on a lawn chair stroking the dog’s head. su looked up at me and asked if we could keep her. I hesitated for a moment thinking of having another mouth to feed on an already uncertain future. I told her that thought, and said that although the dog was indeed a very nice dog, we just could not afford to take one on now.

She pleaded with me, batting those beautiful brown eyes at me coyly. The dog came over to me and stood there looking sadly at me. I eyed her over as she stood there. She was about 30 pounds and was balding in spots. I surmised that she had mange. i pointed that condition out to Su. She continued to plead for keeping the dog. I reached down to pat the dog’s head and she looked up at me and her eyes lit up and she licked my hand as if it were a giant lollipop

I was smitten with her then and there, but the pragmatist in me was still reserved. I told Su that we could keep her only long enough to locate a no kill shelter that would take her. The rest of that afternoon I was online locating no kill shelters. I contacted every one of them in Michigan and even a few of them in northern Ohio and northern Indiana. None of them were taking any more dogs or cats. They were all full due to the horrid economy in this region.

And so I was actually kind of relieved that we were stuck with this particular dog. Su named her Lyndi Lou. And we went back online to the Friends of Animals website and purchased a spay coupon from them and set about to find a local animal hospital that participates in their program. We found a great on in Berkley Michigan about 15 miles from our house.

We took Lyndi there right away and the vet was great. He saw how distressed Lyndi was with the mange and did a skin scraping. He said that she had a bad case of generalized demodectic mange and he recommended a series of medicated baths and dips and a course of antibiotics.

Over the course of the next month we took her once a week to the Berkley Animal Clinic in the morning at nine and dropped her off. She would be done with her treatment by about three in the afternoon. She has had two negative skin scrapings in a row as of two weeks ago. So they scheduled her for the spay on the seventeenth of December, 2010.

So in conclusion, although this year has had some significant challenges for my wife and I, we are ending this year on a high note having given ourselves a wonderful gift, and Lyndi a new lease on life.

Lyndi is just an absolute joy. She has never once been anything but happy with us and our two aging cats even when she had such severe itching because of mange.

Lyndi is a terrier mix. The vet determined that she was only about 7 months old. We think that she has a little bit of American Stafford (Pit) and a little bit of Greyhound in her. She loves to run around in our fenced in back yard. And she is very fast. Her coloring is as beautiful as her disposition is. She is now very healthy and happy to own my wife and I. We wouldn’t have it any other way!

— David from Pontiac, MI