Cookie from Kentucky

Her coat is rough, but it looks great compared to its smell, which is horrendous. The tips of her ears have been eaten away by flies in the summer. She's approaching senior status, maybe 7-8 years old?, and she's got some sort of growth (mammary tumor?) on her belly. Her name is Cookie and she's as sweet as can be. She's here tonight smelling up my office. She's a refugee from Kentucky, coming from one of the poorest counties in the country.

That's Cookie laid out in front of that plastic
dog house. 

I should back up. I adopted a female shepherd to a young woman several, going on many, years ago. We've stayed in touch. Earlier this week I got a text from her with a picture of Cookie. She was in Kentucky on some sort of service trip, I'm guessing school related but I didn't ask. The individual they were helping was Cookie's current owner, having taken her in from prior owners two years ago. She was living on a chain in deplorable conditions (see pic at right).

These first two pictures were taken as they
were preparing to head back to Virginia. She's
obviously happy to be going along.

It's bad enough that humans were living in that sort of condition, but it's inexcusable to keep a dog like that. The owner was prepared to let the dog go and I was obviously going to agree to take her in.

She's well-mannered with dogs and people, and she showed no interest in the chickens running about her yard. Apparently she was a house dog at one time and a family pet but she's been living on a chain for the past two years. She's good on a leash and is trusting of strangers, although for the life I me I can't imagine why.

She went on a two mile hike with Maya and me this afternoon and was all smiles.

Cookie getting checked over by Maya.

She waded into Sparky's watering hole and immediately
laid down, bringing back that lovely wet dog smell.

We are going to work on giving her
more and more reasons to smile.

Consider this the "before" picture. It's supposed to be 85 degrees on Sunday. This dog is going to
get washed and washed again until that smell and all that dead hair is gone. It will take some time
for her to grow a new coat, but we can at least get this one cleaned up while we wait.