Okay, I don't really like a whole lot of personal stuff on the Net, especially on an art site, but I've got nowhere else to put it so I'll put it here.


I'm a dog person. My whole family is but we're exceptionally partial to long-haired dachshunds. We've had at least two for the last 20 years and they are, at least for us, the perfect dog. They are beautiful, stubborn, sometimes aggressive, endlessly entertaining, overly-protective, intelligent little hairy sausages and 10 years ago, we decided to take in rescue dogs. Not only rescue but special needs.

Buttons had been abused and was shy and snappy so no one else would take her. She became Charlie and attached to my sister like a fungus for 4 years until she died of auto-immune disease that took her in just over a day.

Champ had been left at a kill shelter by an idiot family who thought it would be fun to get a dachshund, a breed famous for intolerance toward handsy children, for their 3 year old. He was labeled a biter and unadoptable. I took him in and he is now Michaelangelo, the smartest, sweetest thing on earth, trained to do tricks in Japanese and just shy of being able to speak, we all swear.

Tobey was in a wheeled cart since the age of 1 and 1/2. He had an operation to fix a cyst on his spine and he regained mobility at age 5 but no one wanted him due to his obsessive personality disorder and continency issues. While we took him in to replace Charlie, he latched onto my mother and became her obsessive, overly excited shadow. He got to keep his name and now he runs faster than any of our other dogs.

Waiting for the perfect little girl to stand in the departed Charlie's stead, we finally decided on a tiny miniature dachshund named Penny. She had been a stray on the streets of Miami and had some mammary cancers that had to be taken care of, but we wanted her and we had to fight for her. We finally won, after 6 weeks of waiting and interviews, and we picked her up on May 10th. She was frail and tiny but when we got her home, she danced around and yipped with joy and played with her toy and became a part of our little pack. But three days later, Penny, now Sophie, went into congestive heart failure. Her lungs and abdomen began filling with liquid and she struggled to breath. The tests said her mammary cancer had spread and five days after we brought her home, we laid her to her final rest. It was a short time, but she will always be a part of our family, her ashes now standing in an honored place next to Charlie's.

This is not meant to be sad but informative. The rescue organization in Miami has started a campaign called Pennies for Penny (we won't argue that for us, she will always be Sophie). We wish to educated everyone on mammary cancer in dogs. Sophie was spayed in middle-age (about 5 years old), giving her a 50/50 shot of getting this cancer, but if you spay your female dog BEFORE their first heat, as soon as you get her as a puppy, there is only a .05% chance of her ever getting this cancer! If they are spayed after their first heat, the chance goes up to 26%. So if you have a dog, please remember this or if you know someone getting a new little girl, let them know as well.

If even one dog is saved, Sohpie's loss will not have been in vain. Thanks for reading this far~