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Adopt an Older Dog
The love you give will be given back tenfold
In 2015, I adopted a dog. No one else wanted her. She had been with her foster mom for almost a year.
She was 10 years old. Most people want puppies.
Annie’s body showed the hard life she had. Even though she was a full blooded Scotch collie, she didn’t have the beautiful collie tail. Someone had shot it off her. Yes, with a shotgun.
She had some arthritis in her legs thanks to the shotgun pellets that were left behind. I didn’t find out about these until I’d had her for about a year, though, when a vet did an X-ray. At that point, we put Annie on pain medication.
More visible were Annie’s scars. She had scars on her muzzle. Scars on her legs and belly. Some of the scars were covered by hair, but others were raw, rubbery pink skin where hair would no longer grow.
The rescue organization and Annie’s foster mom told me the scars meant Annie had been used in dog fights.
They pieced together a possible history for my dog — she had probably belonged to a family as a puppy. Many Texas ranchers and farmers kept herding dogs like collies. So at one point, she was part of a family.
When Annie first came to live with me, every time she saw a school bus, she would bark frantically and try to chase…
