[ilovezoe]

Today, March 5, 2006, marks the one year anniversary of my best friend Zoë's birth. That was the best day of my entire life! I remember on March 4, my Mom called me and told me that a friend of a friend's Pug was having puppies. I immediatly had to have one, just hearing about the rare mix of Pug/Shih Tzu...I love all things unique! On March 6, I held her for the first time, when I first laid eyes on her I knew that she was the light of my life. I knew I would love her until the day I died, and she was my baby, even though I didn't have her. To understand her is to understand me. She was the runt of the litter. There was one white puppy with black markings, one black puppy with white markings, two solid white puppies, and two fawn puppies. I got a call from Duchess's (Zoë's mother, who we also rescued) old owner saying that she was weaned at the young age of 3 1/2 weeks, and that I needed to come and get her. I went to the shabby house were I would "rescue" my sweetie, said one final prayer for all the other puppies, wraped her in a blanket, and left. The first night my family and I, gathered around Zoë and watched her eat her first meal. She was the most precious thing I'd ever seen. Meanwhile thinking of all the other puppies, and how they were doing. two of them had already died at birth and the black and white one had already been given away. I called the lady later that week and she refused to give away the other puppies to better homes, so tragically they died. My family and I to this day still cry about this. When she was 6 weeks old we took her to her first vet visit, we got her first round of shots, and her first heartworm/flea and tick perventitive. About a day later, I woke up and was informed by my Dad that she had had seizers and halucinations all night for 12 hours, having to go to school anyway, I cried in terror. I couldn't believe this was happening to her. I bawled all day at school, no one understood, but I didn't care. Come to find out that the vet had overdosed her on the heartworm/ flea and tick preventitive. She was only 1.5 lbs and she had given her the 5-10 lb dosage, as seen on the sales reciept. She eventually slipped out of her convulsions, no thanks to the vet, all that she did was feed her canned dog food and told us to feed her 3-4 times a day (like we haden't been feeding her ). Needless to say that we DIDN'T take her back there. A couple of weeks later she developed demodectic mange and round worms. We found another vet and they told us it was the result of what the other vet had done, because the seizers had stressed out her immune system. We got her treated and she is now 200% better! Since then I have asked questions at every vet appointment and didn't let anyone do anything to her without telling me exactly what it is. We have been through the storm and back, but I have loved every minute of her love and company, she is my sweet heart and I will always love her. All of the horrible events have just brung us closer together.

I am so thankful to have her, we are going to have a birthday party for her complete with treats and a new Lil' Sweetheart Corset! I will post pics when our packages arrive and we have the party, I hope ya'll didn't get too depressed reading her story, I didn't mean to be Debbie Downer, lol. Thanks for reading this everyone!