Missy came to live with us when I was 3 years old. She was 1 year old then, and she was adopted by my dad, James from the Animal Rescue League. I lived with my aunt (still do) and my parents lived somewhere else. They neglected Missy for almost eight years, by keeping her on a heavy tow chain, and her collar was a rusted choke chain that was tangled up in her fur.
When I was 12,I took Missy away from them after seeing her suffer for eight years. Missy was severely underweight, her ears had no fur growing on them because flies were eating at them, and her choke chain that had been her collar for 7 years was rusted into her fur, and it had to be cut off. But, we soon got Missy healthy, after having her updated on all of her shots.
She was a Saint Bernard/Labrador Retriever (yellow) mix. That breed, we found out, is also known as the “Dry Mouth” St. Bernard. Missy was my best friend for all the three years that we had her at my house. Missy was easy to train, and quickly became housebroken, and obedient trained. Her only problem was that, because she had never been socialized by my parents, she was VERY aggressive to other dogs. It was very hard for me to work with her, seeing as she was a little over 100 pounds. I soon got her friendly with other dogs, and she was reformed into a new dog. She was the coloring of a Saint Bernard. Most of her fur was reddish brown, and she had white on her chest, legs, belly, and her tail tip. Her eyes were soft brown,and her eyes had black patches on her eyes, and her tail was very bushy. She looked like a slightly smaller St. Bernard, but she was much larger than a Lab.
I took her to school with me once on a bring your pet to school day, and she made some of the bullying children leave me alone. Missy also once saved me from getting hit by a car. I didn’t know the car was coming, and she pushed me out of the street before it hit me-just in time. She was my guardian angel sent to me from God.
We didn’t live in the best neighborhood, and I knew three girls that I thought were my friends wanted me to come and play with them. I went with them, and took Missy along. They didn’t want me to take Missy, but Missy had to go with me, because she would never stay away from me, and would easily jump out six foot fence if I left her home. Missy didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay home, but I forced her to go with me.
Missy and I were sitting on a metal bar, waiting for the three girls in their yard. One of the girls lived next door, and she owned a huge Rottweiler. They thought it would be funny to let the dog out on me. The Rottweiler attacked me, and Missy started to fight back to keep him off me. Missy won the fight. She came out without any scratches or injuries. The Rottweiler had a ripped open throat, chest, and his leg was torn open badly. I was bleeding because of the Rottweiler, but I had no lasting injury, and I didn’t have to go to the hospital.
Missy had been sick two weeks before the fight, and had had to have a shot to get her better. Being nine years old at the time, it was nothing. She had just had diarrhea. Because of that shot, she could not have her rabies shot. But she didn’t have rabies anyways.
Well, because she hadn’t had that shot, she had to go to the shelter for quarantine. Missy was let out a week later,and she came home. The Rott was healed up after a few months, and was back on his feet. Well, we were not aware that the Rott had a cancerous tumor in his leg – the one that Missy had bitten. Missy had gotten some of his blood in her mouth, and in her blood stream.
Soon, Missy started slowing down. She would not eat, drank too much water, and she wouldn’t come to me anymore. It grew hard for her to breathe, and hard for her to walk. We took her to the vets, and they said she was fine, just growing old, and gave us some pills. They said that twice, but Missy just kept getting worse. Finally they did an x-ray, and it turned out that Missy had cancerous tumors.
One was so large that it was actually pushing her stomach up into her rib cage.It was about the size of a ball.Her chest was full of tumors.There was no cure, and Missy would have either starved to death, or her stomach would have burst, and she would have died.
I made the hard choice to have the friend that I had grown up with, and,later we found, saved my life again. I chose to have Missy put to sleep (euthanized) that day, and,even though I had promised her, I didn’t have the strength to stay with her. That fact still haunts me today. I am crying as I type this.
We picked up Missy’s ashes two days later, and she now sits in our living room’s china cupboard at the very top, with her collar and leash, and the locket that is in with her ashes, and I have the other. We were told it is possible that Missy got the cancer from the Rottweiler. It might have been transferred by blood when Missy bit him.
If Missy hadn’t been there to fight off the Rottweiler, the dog could have killed me by the attack, or he could have transferred the cancer to me, if that is how Missy got it, which I believe.
Even now, I do not blame the Rottweiler, but I blame the irresponsible owners that could not keep their dog locked up. It is there fault, to me, anyways, that my Missy is gone from me forever.
I am putting this story on this site to beg people to love their pets, take care of them, and please keep your pets in your house, or your yard, where they can never cause somebody else to go threw the heartbreak I did, or have something happen to them to cause you the heartbreak.
In Loving Memory To Missy
| Missy |
| Crystalann |