Where is Beauty?

Gracie is our dalmatian. She came to us the year we had lost two of our beloved dogs to cars on the road--Kara, our beloved beagle, and Cami, our best beloved aussie/lab mix. Two of the best dogs God ever created. We had to have Cami put down the day after Christmas, after a month-long effort at recovery. Our remaining dog, Rosie, was rather psychotic without her two buddies, and we needed another dog too.

We had always wanted a dalmatian, so we bought Gracie from a local pet store. Two days later, when she was clearly not well, with bloody diarrhea and vomiting everything--even water, then no appetite at all, and the pet store assuring us that it was just "adjusting", we took her to the vet only to have the diagnosis of parvo. We were devastated. The rational thing to do would have been to have her put down, or allow the store to replace her with another dog. But having lost two dogs in the last 9 months, we were not rational. We decided to keep her and treat her. She lived in a kennel at the vet's for a while, fed by IVs and treated with whatever they treat parvo with, but she still was anorexic. There was nothing more they could do.

We force fed her nutritious mash, one thing after another, trying to find something she would like, trying to find something she would keep down. Every three or four hours we fed her. This on top of working full time and having a toddler and a teenager. At three months, she still only weighed six pounds (as much as a small cat) and she was skin draped over skeleton.

Finally, as a last resort, after a month of round-the-clock force feedings (which took two people), the vet had us try one more last-ditch effort, barium. We force fed her a huge syringeful of barium. The next day her poop was white. The next day, she ate fried chicken we were having for dinner, and there was no shortage of happy people volunteering to share their meal with her. The next day she ate pork, and for a while, we bought and cooked pork steak just for her, as that was all she would eat.

Eventually, she began to eat a normal diet...and then everything. She got to be a fat, over-60-pound dalmatian. And she was very attached to the family, so much so that we feared for other people when she was with us. We could not walk her on a leash as she would hang from her collar, and she was so afraid of and aggressive towards strangers, that we hated taking her out.

About a year ago, she suddenly started to lose weight. The dianosis: diabetes. So she gets shots twice a day, whcih she takes like a trooper. But her vision is very bad. One day K was swinging in the back yard and Gracie barked at him, ran a few feet closer, barked at him some more, ran a few feet closer, etc. Finally, when she was about six feet from him, she recognized him and all was well. I have seen her do the same with our cats, who won't run from her.

Laura told us about a contraption called a "gentle leader" and it has made walks with Gracie possible again, but still I worry about her around other dogs and people. Recently, we have had a friend's dog staying with us and there have been a few horrid fights, of which Gracie comes out the worse, and so she has scars on various limbs and her face. She is dirty from all the mud lately, and she is skinny. She is also quite black--for a dalmatian.

Today, K and I took Gracie for a walk. K wanted to look at some construction going on in town, and we love to be with Gracie. But there were dogs and people everywhere. At one point a dog came running over to her and I covered her as best as I could with my body, not so much to protect her, but to protect the other dog, as Gracie might fight. The owners assured me their dog was friendly.....and I'm sure it looked to them like I was protecting Gracie (not their dog).

But everywhere we went, people commented on what a beautiful dog she was. I of course would say "thank you", but I wondered what they were seeing? She is very skinny, her eyes are cloudy with cataracts, even though she is fairly young, and her head is practically all brown where it should be white from rolling in the mud and playing outside....What did they see?

I'm thinking they probably were seeing with their hearts. Perhaps it shows that Gracie is a very loved dog. Can they see that she was fed for a month against her will as a puppy? Can they see that she gets shots twice a day for her diabetes? Probably not. Do they see the happiness in her eyes that she is out with her people? Her whole body expresses her delight when she is with us. She adores us. It's probably her happiness and enthusiasm that make her beautiful despite her physical appearance.

We have a wall of pictures in our office and we realized that Mom and Dad aren't represented. In choosing a picture of them to print, I picked one where they were both smiling really big and I told G that I chose that one because whenever I see Dad, he is smiling like that at me. And to be honest, Gracie always smiles at me too, if a dog can smile...with a wag of the tail and a dance of the feet and a lift of the head and perk of the ears.

Yes, I think that is where beauty is after all.





"Who? Us? We weren't doing nuthing, honest!!"