Ruby

Every pet I’ve ever had had been a rescue, either from the shelter or stray I wanted to nurse back to health. Strays deserve just as much love and attention as any other animal, and probably more. From cats, to dogs, and birds to rodents, if I find it injured, I’m giving it a home or finding it one after I get it back to good health. I’ve saved a chihuahua from a puppy mill, named her Kiki and turned the puppy mill in. I’ve saved a kitten from a dumpster and named her Meow Meow. On Halloween when we were trick or treating we found a kitten malnourished with worms and an upper respiratory infection and named her BooBoo. And all of these I kept. A kitten I found abandoned by its mother was too far gone and couldn’t be saved. I cried. All of these babies I kept. But Ruby is another story altogether.

Ruby is the sweetest, most hyperactive, wanna be lapdog you’ll ever meet. It’s hard to believe that she was a tiny little malnourished puppy that someone dumped it off their van on my street in front of my house. I want ready to keep a dog, especially a pit Bull, with 2 young children at home. I intended to nurse her to health and find her a home myself, but within a week I had fallen in love with her and couldn’t bear to let her go. People have given pit bulls a bad wrap but I’ve experienced nothing like what I’ve heard about them. They are products of their environment and the ones that attack have always been the ones who were beat or treated badly, or bred to fight.

The one thing that has always stuck out about Ruby, and why it became my final decision to keep her was the fact that she was so loving and kind from the day I picked her up out of the road. She looked like she was barely 8 weeks old but the vet said she had to have been at least 12 weeks old. She was so small and skinny and had little bald spots I thought were mange but was actually where someone had burned her with something. After her neglect and abuse at such a young age, still having that personality of loving kindness in her just made me fall head over heels in love with her.

I’ll never understand how someone can treat animals with any kind of cruelty or neglect when so many people are looking for fur babies to spoil and love! So many animals every year get put down because of crowding and lack of space or healthcare for the animals that have been housed for so long. Ever sit through an ASPCA commercial and NOT cried? It’s not possible. Those poor little animals in cages, on chains, in snow and rain, Looking pitiful and frail just break your heart! So when this van pulled up on my dead end road and dropped this weak, skinny, sickly looking puppy off, I couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. Even if I hadn’t chosen to keep my Ruby Roo, I wouldn’t have slept until she found the right home.

Over the last year and a half or 2, Ruby became a part of the family. She’s still a big puppy, overly excited at the smallest thing, and super protective of my 4 year old daughter. From the slightest whimper, to the biggest of wails from my daughters mouth, and Ruby ids barking up a storm in defense of her towards whatever made her cry. She’ll curl up on the couch with her head in my daughters lap and watch whatever my daughters watching on tv, as my daughter shares whatever snack she had with her puppy. My daughter effectively renamed Ruby because she couldn’t pronounce it correctly, to Poofy, which I’m guessing was her trying to say puppy.

When we have pizza night, you can catch my daughter feeding her poofy the pizza crust and attempting to feed her full slices of pizza. The bond between a child and their dog is a bone that should never be broken and because from the beginning, my daughter and Ruby had a special bond. From cuddling in the dog bed together to sleeping in bed at night, Ruby and Julia have been inseparable from the get go. Taking away Ruby would never be an option. She’s and extension of my daughter and my daughters an extension is Ruby.