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Mia's Story On March 18th, 2000, MommaDog came to live with me. She spent her first three years in one of the infamous Missouri puppy mills, living in a small chain link cage lined with gravel. Her legs were calloused and scabbed from lying on the limestone; she was covered in ticks, scrapes, cuts and bruises. Her body was dotted with white flecks of hair from old injuries—primarily around the head and shoulders. Her ears are more scar tissue than healthy tissue, and her nose…the top of her nose almost half way up her muzzle was one big scrape, oozing and bloody, from rubbing her nose against the chainlink fence of her cage. The mental problems...This dog was broken. Terrified to approach people, yet she loved to be touched. When she was trying to slink by, if you reached down and touched her, she would freeze, then gradually relax and lean against you. This happened several times, and each time I ended up down on my knees, with her leaning her body full against mine, talking to her, petting her. But the instant I got up, she was gone, and acted like I was going to hurt her...the next time I approached her she was just as skittish and scared as the first time. The first few weeks were the hardest. She would run from me every time I stood up, every time I walked towards her…keeping her head down, tail tucked and not taking her eyes off of me. I spent hours just sitting on the floor talking to her, trying to be as unthreatening as possible. I renamed her "Mia", and today, she's a completely different dog. The tiny steps she has made since coming to live with me have quickly added up…the first time she didn't flinch when I touched her, the first time she approached me willingly, the first time she wagged her tail, the first time she ran around the backyard in joy, the first time she came running when I called her name...These things have combined to create a new dog. |
