Sabrina's Story

I lost my heart dog, Malachi, a yellow Labrador Retriever, one year ago last March. He was my best friend. Together we had camped in tents, walked river trails, and lived in four habitats ranging from efficiency apartment to three-bedroom house. We were always there for each other. When he lost his fight with cancer at age 12, I was left shaken, depressed and lonely.

True, I had two other dogs, both well-loved, but absent was the psychic bond shared by Malachi and myself. His speech was eloquent. He spoke in his way, with his great brown eyes. I replied in mine. "Mama loves you," I would tell him, "more than the sun in the mornin', and twice as much as the moon." I meant it, too. When he died, I thought I would never get another dog. I wished I were not responsible for the two who remained. I grieved for two months.

Then one day an odd thing happened. I felt a huge empty space in my home, hovering like a vacuum in my living room. It threatened to suck me into it. I suddenly knew it had to be filled with another dog.

But not another Lab. I would, I reasoned, expect it to be Malachi and no dog could ever live up to that. No longer active as I had been when young, I felt a small dog would be just right. My little pug, Maggie, was so enchanting...perhaps another pug? I knew it would have to be a rescue dog. I had been Malachi's fourth - and last -  owner. So I completed an application for a local pug rescue and emailed it, hoping  there was a little misfit available for me.

It wasn't long before I got the call. There were no dogs in the rescue, she said, but "I had a call about two pugs today, a mother and daughter. They were going to bring them by, but they said these pugs weren't ready yet, they had to see a vet." She gave them my number.

Kathy, the pug rescuer, called and explained she had been given Snuggles and Sabrina by their owner, a backyard breeder, who was moving to Belize. She and her husband had one of Sabrina's puppies, so the woman knew them and asked if they wanted her two remaining dogs. When they came to get them, they were shocked at what they found. The two little pugs were living on a wooden deck outside. Their noses were chapped raw from exposure, their breathing labored from the heat. Sabrina's mouth hung askew, her tongue lolling out - she could not retract it. Her left eye was obscured by a deep lesion - it looked like a bubble instead of an eye.

"How long has her jaw been like that?" Kathy asked.

"Oh," replied the woman, "I guess about a year. I took her to the vet when it happened. He said he couldn't do nothin' for it." She elaborated that a pack of wild cats lived in the neighborhood and often fought the dogs for their food. Sabrina's eye was from an untreated cat scratch, she said. Her jaw injury occurred when she fell from the deck onto the concrete below during a feral cat attack.

Hiding their outrage, Kathy and Kevin, quickly spirited the two pugs into their van and to their veterinarian's office. "Looks more like a kick injury," said the vet ominously. Kathy did a slow burn as she thought of the assorted teenage boys living in the breeder's home, some her sons, some plucked from the street. Sabrina's jaw was set, using a bone graft from her foreleg. It was useless. The broken bones had been left to calcify. They would never mend. Both pugs were spayed and vaccinated, and taken home by Kevin and Kathy. A third, Sabrina's father was not so lucky. He had died of heat stroke unattended on that feces-covered wooden deck. Taking a chance, the rescuers called a recent applicant to the local pug rescue. Me.

"These pugs have to go together," they insisted. "They go everywhere together. One is never without the other." When they catalogued their injuries, I was anguished for the two little dogs and agreed to see them.

They brought Snuggles and Sabrina over on a Sunday morning. I had thought I was prepared. I was not. These pugs were not cute and bright-eyed like my little Maggie. These dogs were grizzled and coarse-looking. One had a badly mangled face and a horrible-looking eye. "Those dogs look mean," said my 11 year-old neighbor girl. I secretly agreed but, being an adult and therefore more diplomatic, hid my dismay under a tight smile. I wasn't sure I wanted to touch them. But when I sat in the recliner and kicked up the footrest, one of the mean-faced little pugs jumped into my lap and stretched out across my legs. She had obvious intentions of staying. "That's Sabrina," they said. A week later I adopted them both.

Sabrina and Snuggles were instantly enthralled with the fenced yard. They walked the perimeter in tandem. Their joy was so obvious, I installed a pet door to give them 24-hour access. Indoors we worked on housebreaking, using only positive reinforcement. Even raising my voice resulted in disappearing pugs. If I thoughtlessly lifted a broom to sweep the kitchen, they scattered.

The Pug Ladies followed me everywhere, dogging my tracks as if their lives depended on it. One day, Sabrina failed to notice I'd stopped and bumped into my leg on her blind side. "AAAaaaarrrppgh!" She  yelped in fear and cowered. She thinks, I realized, that I kicked her. My eyes teared as I crouched beside her, speaking softly, reassuring her I would never, ever hurt her. This scene was repeated many times before she finally came to believe me.

Sabrina always rolled onto her back when approached. I made it my goal to teach her she needn't do that in her new home. As the months passed, both Pug Ladies, who had been silent, began to bark at things. When they realized barking was allowed, they became quite vocal and worked on perfecting their imaginary viciousness to ward off mailmen, stealers of trash and anyone else who dared set foot or paw on their doorstep. They slept on the bed with me, sat next to me on the sofa, figured out that my house and yard was their kingdom and became comfortable enough to take it for granted. Gradually, Sabrina stopped rolling onto her back each time we approached her, but she still habitually lifted one little rear paw, ever prepared to take that dive into a submissive posture if necessary.

In February of the following year, Sabrina began to cough. "Maybe it's just a cold," I told Kevin, who had joined us in the Pug Ladies' Kingdom. We kept a vigil over her. By that evening, it was clear she was having difficulty breathing. Kevin and I rushed her to the animal emergency room. Antibiotics and sedatives were administered. X-Rays were done, and a young veterinarian called us in to view them.

"See this?" She pointed at something indistinguishable and white on the x-ray. "This could be a mass. See how her trachea narrows? It's slowly collapsing, possibly because a mass is constricting it." A mass, I thought. Malachi had had a mass. Horrified, we took her to our own more experienced vet the next day, who changed Sabrina's antibiotic, diagnosed tracheitis, confirmed the collapsing trachea and told us he did not see a mass but referred us to a specialist in nearby St. Louis for confirmation. Thankfully, the internist concurred - no mass in Sabby's chest, but the collapsing trachea was a worry.

 "We don't want her trachea to get irritated," he said. "Try to keep her quiet." He prescribed theophyllin to help Sabby breathe. Both vets thought it best to leave Sabby's bad eye alone unless it became a problem. "If we have to remove the eye," our vet told us, "she probably has a 50/50 chance of making it through surgery." Her damaged trachea and years of abuse made her a high surgical risk.

Sabby's breathing improved on the medication. Soon she was back to her old self. When I got home from work each day, she clambered over the arm of the sofa and onto the end table, tail wagging so hard her entire body rocked back and forth. She threw her crooked little chin into the air and howled, a strange and joyous sound coming from a pug! I swept her into my arms and fussed over her extravagantly. If I stepped outside to pick up the paper, she repeated the entire performance. It didn't matter whether I'd been gone eight hours or 30 seconds. I loved everything about her - her enthusiasm for life, her crooked chin, the way she cocked her ears, the way she lifted one rear paw when she peed, holding it daintily in the air...it was mutual adoration.

Then my worst fears came true. Sabby began averting her bad eye when we reached to stroke her head. The eye was obviously beginning to cause her discomfort. Drainage appeared around the edges. The desmetosael, a severe ulceration of the cornea, seemed to be changing shape. We had been told to watch for this, that this was the worst sign. We took her back to the specialists. Yes, they confirmed, she needed to have the eye removed.

The day before her the dreaded surgery, I asked all my fellow rescuers to say a prayer for her. I thought if God heard enough voices on her behalf, He might spare this beat-up little dog who deserved so much better. "Surely," said one friend, "she didn't suffer all those years just to die now during surgery?" I had no answer. I had been depressed and teary for days. I was so afraid of losing her.

The morning of her surgery, I took her daybed and one of my old shirts with her. "Can she wake up in here?" I asked. The tech smiled. "She'll probably poop in it."

"That's okay," I replied. The girl behind the counter looked up. "She wants her to have it," she said pointedly. He nodded and smiled. I wasn't the first overprotective mom he'd seen. I handed Sabrina to him. When he turned to face me, she looked at me quizzically, head cocked to one side.

"Be a good girl," I said, voice cracking. "Mom'll be back to get you as soon as she can." I cried all the way home, and spent the morning at work, fearing the worst, waiting for the call that would tell me her trachea had closed during surgery, they'd been unable to save her. The call finally came at 12:10.

"The surgery is over," said the voice. "Everything went fine. Sabrina's resting. Call tomorrow between 10:00 and 11:00 and the doctor will let you know if she can go home." I was reservedly thrilled. I could not feel completely comfortable until I saw Sabby safe and well with my own eyes.

I arrived early the next morning, impatient as the paperwork was done. At last, they went to get her. I stood watching anxiously down the hallway. After what seemed like an hour, two vet techs carried my Sabby out in a soft e-collar.

"Sabrina!" I shouted. She looked like she'd lost a prizefight, the absent left eye swollen and stitched shut, half her head and two legs shaved for IVs and a skin tag removal. We sat her on the floor. She looked up at me, wagged her tail, and stretched her front legs out butt in the air like a sleepy cat. The techs laughed. Obviously she'd gotten bored waiting for me.

My heart leaped as I kissed her bald, misshapen head and scratched her grizzled chin. She looked up at me with the one soulful eye in her battered  face as if to say, "I knew you'd come, but what took you so long?"

"You know how much mama loves you?" I asked, happily hugging her to my chest. "More than the sun in the mornin', and twice as much as the moon." Yes, she answered, I know.

It was a sunny day in St. Louis. Together we trotted down the pavement toward the parking lot, Sabby and I, happy and comfortable in each other's company and confident the worst was behind us. We climbed into the car and headed for home.

Addendum

On Thursday, April 5th, I came home from work to find Sabrina unable to stand or walk. Her sudden onset of neurological symptoms may indicate a brain tumor or lesion. She was treated with IV and oral steroid therapy. For the next week, I missed work (Thank You, Jane Lee of The Violence Prevention Center of Southwestern Illinois, for being so understanding) and stayed by her side, carrying her everywhere, massaging her bony little head and reassuring her (when I wasn't crying). On the final day, we had decided to euthanize Sabrina. She was so weak and exhausted she could barely lift her head. I kept postponing the inevitable...one more hour, maybe this afternoon, not this morning...we can give her until four o'clock. All the while, I prayed...that seemed to be all I could do. 

That afternoon, an amazing thing happened. Sabrina lifted her head and suddenly seemed better. Within hours, she was standing and taking wobbly steps. A day later, she startled us by jumping onto the sofa while gaped at each other open-mouthed and speechless! Now, one month later, she appears as if she was never ill. 

We don't know how long it will last, but every day we say a "Thank You" prayer to God for sharing our Sabby with us a bit longer. May this little girl, who endured six years of abuse, have a long and happy stay with those of us who adore her. And if not, we are so incredibly grateful, just for today.