Pawsitive Pup: Sophie

This is new part to my blog series called Pawsitive Pups. You will be able to submit a picture or pictures of your dog and say why they are pawsitive dog. What makes them stand out? They can be adopted or bought, a pure bred or a mutt.  But they're yours and you can let Lakewood know they are great.  My first Pawsitive Pup will be my own foster dog Sophie.

We are Sophie's second family. For the first 14 years of her life she lived with an elderly woman. She unfortunately died, and evidently didn't take proper care of Sophie near the end. Sophie was dropped off a kill shelter in southern Ohio but was rescued by All Dogs Heaven special needs dog rescue. Five pounds of matted, painful hair was removed from her revealing two large mammary tumors, in other words breast cancer. The cancer was probably caused by a combination of skin trauma caused by the prolonged matting and that she was never fixed. Her age prevents her from going through with the operation that runs as much of a chance of causing her to be in pain for the rest of her life or even end it as removing her affliction. After a few months in the rescue, my wife and I brought Sophie into our house.

Sophie turned out to be a difficult pup. She peed throughout the house, snapped at the dogs, didn't know or pay attention to commands and hated any separation from us. She had sleep in a crate at night because she could only hold her bladder a few hours at a time. During the night, she would bark and cry every time she woke up or had to relieve herself. She has never acted like she is in pain but figured she didn't have much time left. Sophie had other ideas in mind.

Every month that we've had her she has healed and learned. It took four frustrating months but her accidents slowly ended. Sophie now sleeps in a dog bed in our bedroom and has only peed in the house once in the last month or two. It did take a week of getting out of bed and putting her back in back in hers over and over again, night after night. She is mostly blind in one eye and has depth perception issues but has learned to navigate our many stairs and doors without issues. Her snappiness with dogs has calmed and she goes to daycare with me multiple days a week. Every time she gets her hair cut it becomes healthier and softer as well.

Sophie's ability to heal after a traumatic portion of her life isn't even what earns her a featured article in Pawsitive Pups. Her big achievement is that after 7 months with us she has trained and learned enough to get her AKC Canine Good Citizen achievement. She has learned to be polite when meeting new people and dogs. She walks loosely at our heal on walks. Her hardest challenge was to be willing to stay in one place even if we were beyond her sight (which isn't that far). Sophie has had everything against her but is a role model to other dogs. Sophie has proven you can teach an old dog new tricks, even a 16 year old.

Sophie has been a great addition to our household. She has proven, to us at least, that even if we don't have much time with her every day counts. Sophie is a Pawsitive Pup, even if she couldn't sit for a second or her hair was coarse as steel wool, she's part of our family and that's positive enough for us.

You can submit your dog to Pawsitive Pup through samlakewood@gmail.com