This is our lovable child. Jackie is 15 years old now and is a rescue. The picture on the left shows him about a year old. On the right, 10 years old. He is a member of the family and lives like a king in our home.

Our son, Paul, rescued him one evening coming home from work in 1992. Jack ran into the street right in front of Paul’s car. Paul stopped to see if he was OK and noticed that he was pretty thin and had no collar. He was sure he had been abandoned. He brought him home and fed him and took him to the vet the next day for a check-up. The doctor estimated his age to be about 6 months old. We posted flyers around the neighborhood and no one claimed him. It is hard to believe that there are people out there that abandon dogs and cats.

He named him Jack as he almost became a flapjack. He has heart and liver problems and cataracts now and isn’t expected to live much longer. Amazingly he doesn’t have arthritis and his lungs are so clear for his age. Our fear is having to put him down should he become stressed from pain or have breathing problems. It would just kill us to have to do that. I pray that it doesn’t happen. I hope he will go to sleep one night and pass away peacefully. Not looking forward to that either.

We had two dogs before Jack. The first one was Dolly, a Shepard & Husky mix and our second dog was Kelso an Alaskan Malamute. Both dogs were just as sweet as Jack and we cried many many months after their passing. It is not easy. Mark, we were in bed listening to your story (in the dark) about Sprite and how it was so difficult to put him down; you could have heard a pin drop in our room. I was in tears and I suppose my husband was too. We knew what you must have gone through.

Sharlene  from CA

I’ve been putting off writing this not because I didn’t want to do it but because it is tough to write. When my wife and I got married at age 24 she had a Chihuahua named Buster that was getting up in years. He was getting fairly senile and had gone pretty much blind at that point. She had had him since she was a young girl.

For a short time after we got married, we lived with her Mom who had been widowed long before my wife and I ever met. Her Mom had never lived alone after she was widowed and welcomed the company. I was able to repair things around the house and on their vehicles which helped them out quite a bit.

Enter Lacey. After the wedding, Buster’s health began to slide. We had spent the weekend at my best friend’s (also the Best Man in our wedding) place out of town. His then wife had a Yorkshire Terrier that had a litter while we were there. My wife thought they were “really cute”. We enjoyed holding them and she mentioned something on the way home about wanting one. What she didn’t know at the time is that they had all already been spoken for. I mentioned that we would be interested in one from the next litter to my friend. Little did we know that we would later have the pick of the litter delivered free of charge later that year.
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This isn’t a story, but I have to share the impact these stories have made on me.

After listening to the stories and hearing the songs on the show, I am almost at the point of crying.

When we are ready to buy a dog for our family, thanks to Mark and all of you on this blog, we are going to consider looking into a shelter to adopt. We might even consider a dog instead of a puppy.

Rebecca from KS

This is about my dearly departed Dachshund/Cairn mix, Sophie. She lived to be 18 years old, and lived with me for 17 years after I adopted her from our local humane society. She was such a sweet, smart and gentle little girl who loved her mommy beyond words, and I loved her right back. Friends still remark at how smart she was — she had nuances to her personality and mannerisms that were so human you almost thought she was! She would leave biscuits in friends’ luggage when they would visit. One of the funniest things she ever did was many years ago when a friend was staying over and using the sofa bed, and the cushions were stacked on Sophie’s favorite chair. As my friend stood next to the chair looking out the window, Sophie sat between her and the chair, looking back and forth from her, to the chair, to her, back to the chair … back and forth many times before my friend finally caught on and removed the cushions. Sophie sighed, exasperated at the thickness of human logic, and jumped up to the back of the chair, where she could contentedly but belatedly look out the balcony window.
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Hi Mark, My wife and I got a free a dog that was suppose to be a Cocker but after driving an hour we found that the dog was a Lab, Terrier,and God knows what else. He was twelve weeks old and we named him Buster and had him house trained in a week,Buster was a very smart dog. He just looked like a Buster. Well after 14 yrs. Buster got very sick.I t just happened so fast. We had to put our Buster down. This was my first time. As I held Buster my heart was being ripped from my chest when I felt him slip away. I burst into tears along with my wife. Then we started to watch my sister’s dog when they had to go out of town.His name was Tyler. This was about 8 months after Buster left us. It was in the fall when Tyler got very sick.He had a liver problem but he was doing fine. I rushed him to the same hospital.Tyler was dieing. I called my sister in Michigan. We had to put him down.I had to put down someone else’s dog.Two dogs in a matter of just a few months.It was a bad year for me.And someone else’s dog to boot.Four yars later we got a Chocolate Lab. His name is Rocky James. And is smart as a whip.I love dog’s and will always have one.We are thinking of getting another one,a yellow Lab maybe. Keep doing a great job Mark. If your ever in Cincinnati look me up and my wife and I would love to have you over for a home cooked meal while your on the road. God Bless and Power to the true Americans.

Joe from Ohio

I tried to write this once and couldn’t do it justice, and in fact couldn’t get through it. We lost our 17 year old buff colored cocker spaniel Max a year ago to cancer, had to have him put to sleep. It was the hardest thing ever to do, but he was such a faithful friend we couldn’t let him down at the end, when he needed us the most. I find it hard to write this without tearing up, a year later. Max had some lifelong health problems, he was epileptic, hypothyroid, hypercholesterolemic, among other things, and took daily medication. Those problems didn’t shorten his lifespan, though, and didn’t change his sweet and gentle disposition. When we got the diagnosis of cancer, we took Max home and spoiled him rotten for the time he would have left (8 months). He got all the french fries, pork rinds, ice cream, and sirloin he wanted.

Max was the family dog, he loved everyone, was incredibly gentle with infants — he adored babies. He was my chidlren’s faithful companion. We rescued and adopted Max when my daughter was 7 years old, in second grade; she is 24, married and a mother now with a dog of her own (a labrador retriever, a lovable goof). Max would sleep on the floor in Stephanie’s bedroom, and during the night he would steal her pillow from under her head, and her teddy bear from under her arm. Stephanie would wake in the morning to find Max sleeping with his head on her pillow, and the teddy bear under his foreleg, tucked against his chest. We had to get Max his OWN pillow and his OWN teddy bear before he would leave Stephanie’s alone. He slept on that pillow with his teddy for years.
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