MikeY!

MikeY!
Originally uploaded by JW05.

Most of you who read this will already know the story, but I felt like writing it out again. :)

Recently, the humane society in my town had this puppy on their website. He had entropion, a condition in which the eyelides roll under and irritate the eye constantly, so he barely held them open, his eyes were constantly gunky, and he would eventually become blind without surgery. This surgery was estimated to cost anywhere from $500 to 1000, and my mom was worried no one would take him, knowing he'd cost so much up front.

My mother has always been an animal lover. It's rare to find a picture of her as a child without some kind of animal in her arms. The only baby animals we've ever had around were Mama's kittens, because Mama wasn't even our cat. All of our animals are promptly spayed or neutered so we don't contribute to the already-too-large pet population. All of the animals I can remember having we have either found or rescued. We aren't really cat people, but we've somehow ended up with 2 cats now. My mom likes cocker spaniels, but we have two dogs that are not one bit spaniel. We've had dogs, cats, a rabbit, frogs, snakes, turtles, guinea pigs, fish... quite the menagerie over the years. And almost all of them have needed homes.

Mom went to go see Mikey, and he's got a really sweet personality. The receptionists said no one had shown interest in him, and he'd been there about a month already. Even though 3/4 of our family are currently full-time college students (and the other probably will be in 3 years), Mom decided that she wanted Mikey. She picked him up almost two weeks ago and scheduled his surgery for last Wednesday. The surgery was on the low end of the estimate, and appears to have gone really well. He's as sweet as ever, and holds his eyes open most of the time now.

My brother- always one to argue- was completely against getting Mikey. He kept trying to convince my mom of the many reasons that we didn't need this dog.

And when she finally got a word in edgewise, my mom agreed with him. We didn't need Mikey-- but he needed us.